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New British-built Nissan Juke unveiled as radically styled EV

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 02:15:00 +0100

Electric SUV will go on sale in spring 2027 alongside an updated version of current-generation hybrid

Nissan has unveiled the new Juke as its third EV, a car that it says will “help us reach new customers”, thanks to its radical new exterior design.

The quirky SUV is Nissan's second best-seller in Europe after the Qashqai, with more than 1.5 million examples sold since the original was launched in 2010.

The third-generation Juke, unveiled early this morning at the brand’s future-looking Vision Event in Japan, is based on Nissan’s CMF-EV platform and so powered exclusively by electricity.

It will share much of its underpinnings with the smaller Leaf EV, alongside which it will be built at Nissan’s Sunderland factory.

The Japanese firm’s answer to the Ford Puma Gen-E and Kia EV3 sports a “reimagining” of the Juke’s heavily sculptured and distinctive design, as previewed by 2024’s radical Hyper Punk concept. It also features its own light signature at the front and rear.

As its predecessors have done since 2010 with their “bold designs” that “challenge convention”, the new Juke will “help us reach new customers” within the EV market, said regional product boss Clíodhna Lyons.

However, in an effort to continue catering for as many customers as possible, the new Juke will be sold alongside an updated version of the current second-generation Juke hybrid.

Nissan originally planned to replace the Mk2 with the Mk3, but slower-than-expected EV sales growth made this move financially untenable.

However, Nissan Europe boss Massimiliano Messina was steadfast in confirming that the brand “remain firmly committed to a fully electric future", saying the decision to offer both powertrains brings “greater choice” to buyers while helping to “accelerate our transition to zero-emission mobility”.

Expected updates for the Mk2 Juke, which is also manufactured at Sunderland, are expected to concentrate on aligning its design with the Mk3. Its technology, now seven years old, is also due a refresh.

Details of what underpins the new Juke have yet to be confirmed, but it's expected to mirror the Leaf. That car offers either a 52kWh or 75kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt battery for up to 386 miles of range; power tops out at 215bhp; and, unlike in the larger Ariya EV, drive is sent exclusively to the front wheels.

Nissan Europe's R&D boss, David Moss, previously hinted that the new Juke could feature a bespoke chassis set-up that would help distinguish it from the technically identical Leaf and emphasise its more 'dynamic' character. This differentiation is particularly relevant given that the Leaf has morphed from a hatchback into a crossover that's very similar in size to the Juke.

Nissan isn’t worried about the pair stepping on each other’s toes, however. Its chief performance officer Guillaume Cartier told Autocar previously that their buyers "are a totally different profile, with nothing in common” because they occupy completely “different customer bubbles”. He said that the Juke is a “Marmite” car and one that “will not be compared to anything else”.

The new Juke was designed, engineered and developed in the UK, Spain and Germany, which Nissan said “underlines [its] long-term investment in Europe as both a production and innovation hub.”

Build trials at Sunderland will begin in the coming weeks, ahead of full production commencing in early 2027. Sales will then begin in the spring.

New-look Mercedes EQS brings 575-mile range and steer-by-wire

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 23:01:00 +0100

Electric limousine heavily updated with new styling, battery chemistry and radical steering technology

One of Europe's longest-range EVs, the Mercedes-Benz EQS, has had its legs stretched even further with the addition of a new version that can go nearly 600 miles between charges.

The flagship electric limo has been heavily updated for 2026, receiving a raft of visual and technical enhancements that will help its case against the BMW i7, Lucid Air and upcoming Jaguar Type 00.

Chief among the tweaks is the adoption of a battery chemistry that boosts energy content by 3%, taking the outright capacity from 118kWh to 122kWh with no impact on the size or weight of the unit.

The increase in capacity, as well as various tweaks to improve efficiency, mean the rear-driven EQS 450+ now has 13% more official range, at 575 miles - only a few less than the Air Grand Touring, which is currently Europe's longest-legged EV.

The dual-motor EQS has meanwhile had its range boosted to 544 miles.

While the EQS remains on the EVA2 platform (which it shares with the smaller EQE), it has made the significant switch from a 400V electrical architecture to an 800V one, which means the maximum charging speed is up from 200kW to a much more competitive 350kW - in line with the maximum speed of most UK public chargers.

It can still use 400V chargers, though, having the capacity to 'virtually divide' its battery into two parts and top up each half at 175kW.

The EQS's motors are meanwhile said to mark a "generational leap" from their predecessors, being more compact, more efficient and more robust, while the amount of energy they can recuperate under deceleration is up by a third, at 385kW.

Elsewhere, the EQS has been fitted with a new optional steer-by-wire system (as recently tested by Autocar), which replaces the mechanical steering column with a virtual linkage to save space and weight and swaps the steering wheel for a yoke, as the lock-to-lock range has been reduced from several turns to just 270deg.

The EQS also gets an upgraded version of the Airmatic air suspension system that's fitted to the new electric GLC and updated S-Class, which uses data from the cloud to prepare the dampers for potholes and speedbumps.

There's also a new automatic reversing function for use in tight environments where turning isn't possible; the headlights illuminate a 40% wider field while using 50% less energy; and the front end has been resculpted to optimise aerodynamic efficiency.

The seatbelts now heat up, too, warming to 44deg in cold weather to "ensure rapid comfort as well as the brand's signature 'welcome home' feeling".

Customer deliveries are due to get under way in the second half of the year. Prices are expected to rise slightly; they currently start at around £100,000.

Ford Mustang designer Kemal Curic named McLaren design boss

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:25:24 +0100

Ford Performance Vehicles design boss moves to Woking to shape British supercar maker's new era

McLaren has announced its new design boss: Kemal Curic, who formerly led design for Ford Performance Vehicles.

Curic joins the British supercar maker to replace Tobias Sühlmann, who left for Porsche earlier this year after a three-year stint as chief design officer.

Curic had been at Ford since 2004, working first as an interior designer and going on to play a significant role in the design of the Mk3 Focus, before leading the styling of the S550-generation Mustang.

More recently, the Bosnian-German has been based in the US, heading up design for Ford's luxury brand Lincoln.

Stationed in Woking as of this month, he will be responsible "for shaping the design vision and creative direction of the McLaren Automotive portfolio", the company said, with a remit that encompasses interior, exterior, CMF and digital design.

McLaren is gearing up for a ground-up renewal of its product portfolio – and an expansion into new segments outside of the traditional supercar sphere – following its merger with start-up Forseven last year. It's due to preview its first model created under Forseven this summer.

It isn't clear whether Curic will play a leading role in the shaping of these first new-era McLaren models or whether their styling was signed off under the previous design administration.

Curic said: "McLaren is one of the most respected and aspirational brands in the world. I’m excited to be part of their journey to help shape the design vision of a company so deeply rooted in engineering excellence and racing heritage.

"I look forward to working with the talented teams at McLaren to create the next generation of breathtaking, purpose‑driven cars."

Lepas L6: Jaecoo 7 sibling confirmed for UK launch as PHEV and EV

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0100

Second model from new Chery-owned Chinese brand will be positioned as a rival to the Hyundai Kona

The Lepas L6 will arrive in the UK at the back end of the year as a Hyundai Kona-rivalling crossover with hybrid and electric power.

Cousin to the hugely popular Jaecoo 7, the L6 will be Lepas's second UK model following the flagship L8, which will arrive this summer to rival the Mazda CX-5 and Toyota RAV4.

Lepas (whose name is a portmanteau of 'leopard', 'leap' and 'passion') is owned by Chinese giant Chery and has been created with a focus on the European market. It's a sibling brand to Omoda, Jaecoo and Chery.

The five-seat L6 will be offered with the choice of two powertrains, either plug-in hybrid or battery-electric.

The PHEV uses the same 204bhp powertrain as the Jaecoo 7, which became the UK’s best-selling car last month. This combines a 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with an electric motor and 18.3kWh battery.

Lepas claims the PHEV is good for 700 miles of combined range, but it hasn't yet detailed how much of that is on the battery alone. For reference, the 7 offers 56 miles of electric-only range.

The electric L6 draws power from a new 67kWh battery pack, which gives it a range of 270 miles. It can be rapid-charged from 30-80% in 20 minutes.

This technology is a step up from its Jaecoo E5 and Omoda E5 electric cousins, which use a smaller 61kWh battery, have 257 miles of range and take 28 minutes to charge the same amount.

Lepas hasn't yet revealed what motors the L6 will use, but expect output to be similar to the E5's 208bhp.

No details on the L6's interior have been confirmed, but the larger L8 gives clues of what to expect. That features a portrait-oriented 13.2in infotainment touchscreen, an array of physical buttons for control climate functions and a wireless phone charger.

Lepas UK MD Ray Wang said the L6 “marks an exciting step for our brand in Europe and the UK market”.

Pricing and full UK trim specifications will be revealed closer to the car’s arrival in the last quarter of the year.

Can Denza really establish itself as a luxury brand?

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:00:00 +0100

As Denza prepares to hunt Porsche customers, we ask: is glitz and glamour enough to join the old guard?

The BYD-owned Denza brand has thrust itself onto the European stage with a lavish launch event at the Palais Garnier in Paris.

This cinematic, blockbuster-scale soirée marked its official entry into the European market - and it was by far and away the most opulent launch event I've ever attended.

The Palais Garnier is, of course, the Parisian opera house. Completed in 1875, it's a bona fide cultural institution and the legendary inspiration for Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera.

The guest list was suitably stellar: motorsport royalty like Felipe Massa and Jean Todt rubbed shoulders with a glittering array of modern celebrities. Naturally, the requisite army of influencers did their bit, dutifully supplying the correct hashtags and parroting Denza's tagline, 'Technology Drives Elegance'. Global CEOs and politicians were reportedly in attendance too, keeping a decidedly low profile.

On arrival, I was met by a scrum of the young and glamorous queuing for half an hour just to snap a picture alongside the Z9 GT shooting brake, its modern lines contrasting sharply against the ornate Second Empire architecture. It was undeniably buzzy. It looked fantastic on Instagram.

But will any of this actually equate to sales? I understand the strategy: soft power is a potent weapon, one that nations and corporations alike have wielded for decades. BYD’s sponsorship of the Euro 2024 football tournament made perfect sense, capturing a cumulative audience north of five billion.

Yet I wonder if this Parisian spectacle possesses the same mainstream traction. Denza is not merely a new brand but also one deliberately swimming against the tide. It's transparently pitching itself as a Porsche rival, demanding Porsche money.

The Z9 GT EV will command around £100,000 when it lands in the UK. Granted, it boasts more than 1100bhp, a level of performance that would require parting with £160,000 in Stuttgart. But a standard Porsche Taycan can still be had for roughly £90,000, and Porsche buyers will require serious convincing to abandon heritage for an upstart.

So where else are buyers coming from? Polestar customers might embrace the disruptor narrative, but they are reassured by the underlying Volvo pedigree. Jaguar enthusiasts, perhaps? If online comment sections are any metric, Jaguar is currently struggling to attract Jaguar buyers.

Does the grand illusion work? Do buyers in the £100,000-car bracket actually attend the opera? While the Palais Garnier projects an aura of 'old money' to the uninitiated, it isn’t exactly where true wealth spends its weekends. A cursory Google search reveals the reality: it's a tourist attraction that occasionally stages an opera. You can rent a room there on Airbnb. You will find more about it on GetYourGuide than in Art Review.

Denza is undoubtedly a bold new brand attempting something different. However, the Z9 ultimately lacks the elusive 'wow' factor that's required to sever buyers' allegiances to established European marques. And I remain unconvinced that hosting a glitzy gala dinner at a heavily trafficked opera house will be enough to lure them into the showrooms.

New Denza Z9 GT EV: £100k, 1140bhp Porsche Taycan rival tested

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:00:00 +0100

Crab-walking, 0-62 in 2.7 secs and nine-minute charging: can it justify that £100,000 price tag?

This Denza is not quite like any Chinese car that has gone before it. You can - and I would - argue that other Chinese cars aim to beat the competition by offering more: more power, more tech, and more space, all for less money.

However, Denza is offering more for, well, more. Prices are yet to be confirmed, but this EV will cost around £100,000 at least. In France, it will be similar. In Australia - £55,000 to £60,000, and in China, about £45,000.

The EV (a PHEV will follow) uses a 309bhp motor on the front axle and twin 416bhp motors on the rear, producing a combined output of 1140bhp. Those independent rear wheels give it a few party tricks, including "crab walking" and turning the rear wheels in tandem to parallel park for you - simply drive nose-first, and the rear follows you in.

The rear wheel steering is ace in a tight spot - but it makes the steering quite heavy and grainy when you engage it at low speeds - like you need to push past some kind of mechanical barrier.

It has a 372-mile range, which is so-so. But Denza is hoping its new charging network will make up for that - and it become its Tesla Supercharger eureka moment. Dare I say, it really needs one, because the car is just good. It is better than fine, but not great.

It will be able to accept power at a rapid 1500kW, allowing it to charge from 10 to 97 per cent (stopping short of 100 per cent to extend the life of the battery) in just nine minutes. I watched it do this in a demonstration, and it is mesmerising. I drive a lot of EVs, and I very rarely need to charge from 10 to 90%. If I am rapid-charging, I am more likely to charge from 10 to 30% - just enough to get me home, where I will plug in because it is much cheaper. With this car, that will take a mere couple of minutes.

There is Lidar on the roof, too, futureproofing the car for autonomous driving. Denza is banking on governments changing legislation to allow for higher levels of autonomy; when they do, unlocking it should merely be a case of a software update.

But I’ll get back on terra firma and tell you about the actual car. It has a curious, estate-like shape. It’s not unhandsome and comes in some lovely, bright colours. The front is slightly generic, but there are some ornate creases along the sides and a lovely, shooting brake-like rear with large tail-lights that evoke 1960s Americana. It’s not anonymous, but it doesn't stop you in your tracks either.

Inside, the quality is largely good. Stella Li, the executive vice-president, made numerous references to not wanting leather in her new Denza showrooms, which should arrive in the UK around July. Yet, this Z9 is full of cowhide. There is even a fetching, purplish colour option that I imagine very few will buy.

Space for passengers in the rear is top-notch. There are only four seats, but all four get heating, cooling, and massage functions, and the rear two can also recline. The boot is actually on the small and narrow side, but there is a bit of underfloor storage and a "frunk" too.

To drive, it is bloody quick. Pull the paddle behind the steering wheel to activate boost mode, and you can believe that sub-3.0-second 0-62mph time. The pace tails off beyond that, however. While from a standstill it is galvanic, its accelerative ability feels more subdued at every other speed. I think this is because of its weight.

Internet commenters, get your typing finger ready: it weighs 2.9 tonnes. Being this heavy has a profound effect on everything. When it accelerates hard, the nose lifts significantly. The suspension - more on that later - has an awful lot to do; sometimes it does a great job, and at other times, not so great. Then there are the brakes. With three tonnes and 1100bhp, you need good ones, and the carbon ceramics are strong. But the pedal has just too much travel before you hit the full anchors. Even after more than an hour of driving, it was still pretty hard to modulate.

Denza reckons it will crack 3.0 miles per kWh, and on my testing, it pretty much did just that. It’s not bad for a car of this size and power, but the Germans are getting much better results, admittedly with less power.

The dual-chamber air suspension has a few different settings, though its firmest is still pretty bloody soft. It could do with a touch more damping for UK tastes. It has a habit of burying itself deeply into undulations and emerging on the other side quite slowly. At motorway speeds on roads in good condition, it is really pretty comfortable; you could do serious mileage comfortably. But at lower speeds, there’s the jittery pitter-patter of a car that has a lot going on underneath it.

It’s a bit of a feeler, this car. It has 1100bhp - but does it feel that quick? It has the empirical hallmarks of luxury, but does it feel premium? It costs £100,000, but does it feel like a £100,000 car? I don’t think so.

There are oddities that prevent it feeling like a Porsche rival. The doors are electrically operated and the aperture it opens up is sometimes inconsistent, there are very unassured bits if you look (like the vanity mirror cover held up via magnet) and the touchscreen, while useful, has pretty standard fonts from an Android operating system, a few erroneous capital letters and there’s even a file manager - a bit like when the McDonald’s ordering screens aren’t working and it defaults to its operating system.

It's £50,000 elsewhere in the world. And apart from the crazy power, it feels like a £50,000 car.

Denza Z9 GT EV

Price £100,000 (est)Engine Three permanent magnet synchronous motors Power 1140bhp Torque 892lb ft Gearbox 1-spd reduction gear, 4WD Kerb weight 2895kg 0-62mph 2.7sec Top speed 168mph Battery 122kWh usable Range, economy 372 miles, 3.0mpkWh CO2, tax band Og/km, na Rivals Porsche Taycan, Polestar 5

New Bentley Bentayga due 2028 as high-performance PHEV

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Firm has delayed its full EV plans in favour of plug-in hybrids – but will still offer some pure-ICE special editions

The next Bentayga SUV will arrive in 2028 as the flag-bearer for a new wave of Bentley plug-in hybrids following a major rethink of its EV strategy.

The Crewe manufacturer has scrapped plans to launch five new EVs by 2030, including an electric successor to the Bentayga. Instead, Bentley will invest in a new generation of PHEV-powered models.

The dramatic revamp to Bentley's product strategy is a result of the decision by sibling brand Porsche to delay a new electric platform it was developing in response to the slowing uptake of premium EVs.

Bentley boss Frank-Steffen Walliser believes PHEV technology will be the best bridge for the firm in the run-up to 2035 when under current legislation all new cars sold in the UK and 90% in the European Union will need to be fully electric.

However, the decision doesn't affect the brand's debut electric model - dubbed Luxury Urban EV - which will be unveiled in the second half of the year. Following that, said Walliser, the next Bentley EV won't arrive until after 2030.

The current Bentayga is the brand's best-seller and made up around half of all Bentley's sales last year. It has been on sale since 2015 and received a major facelift in 2020.

The new Bentayga, like its siblings, was initially slated to arrive as an EV on Porsche's advanced Sport ('61') version of parent Volkswagen Group's SSP platform. However, Porsche last year delayed the architecture until the next decade at a cost of €1.8 billion (£1.6bn), causing Bentley to substantially rewrite its product plan.

As a result, the second generation of the Bentayga will switch to the PPC platform used by the new combustion-powered Porsche Cayenne and forthcoming Audi Q9.

Walliser said the delay in the transition to electric means "we don't have to force people to change from a combustion engine or plug-in hybrid car to an electric car" when the buyer demand is not there yet.

He added that Bentley has "a very loyal fan base that stays in the Bentayga and this is very, very good for our business". His comments highlight the commercial benefits for Bentley in deciding to continue with ICE for its next-generation SUV.

The PPC architecture has been engineered to accommodate a range of six- and eight-cylinder petrol engines, as well as a next-generation plug-in hybrid system. The latter uses new-era batteries and electronics systems to deliver a greater EV range than the 30 miles offered by today's Bentayga PHEV.

As a result, the next generation of the luxury SUV will be launched primarily with a PHEV system centred on a 3.0-litre V6 and offer a similar output to today's 456bhp.

Alongside the incoming plug-in hybrid models, Walliser confirmed that Bentley will continue to offer pure-ICE power. But this powertrain option will be kept to "selective" models and depend on "markets. and legislation", he said, noting the differences in emission laws, particularly in the key US market.

As well as enabling Bentley to offer pure-petrol cars in markets such as the US, it is also possible that limited-run special models in the UK could go without electric assistance.

Further details of the new Bentayga are still unconfirmed, but the design will be led by the EXP 15 concept, revealed last year, and be closely linked to the smaller 'Urban SUV', which will slot in underneath the Bentayga as a rival to the Porsche Cayenne Electric and Lotus Eletre.

The new Bentayga's architecture can accommodate a host of new technologies, including advanced air suspension with active ride control and the latest driver assistance functions. It is also highly scalable, which will allow the Extended Wheelbase version of the luxury SUV - the most popular among buyers to continue.

Following the Bentayga, Walliser said the rest of the existing range – Continental GT, GTC and Flying Spur – will gain the next-generation PHEV tech. But to do this, they will need to move from their current MSB underpinnings to the new PPC architecture. Given that new generations of all three arrived in 2024, this is likely to happen close to the end of the decade.

Bentley's debut EV will be shown for the first time in the final quarter of this year before first deliveries begin in early 2027. it will use the same PPE platform as the new electric Cayenne, which suggests it will be offered exclusively with dual-motor, four-wheel-drive powertrains putting out as much as 1140bhp.

In the Cayenne, a 113kWh battery helps it to achieve a range of up to 398 miles.

Walliser described it as "a different proposition" from what "other competitors are doing". He added: "I strongly believe we have a very Interesting offer."

Although it is a similar size to the Bentayga, Walliser said Bentley will not position it as an electric equivalent. Instead, the brand is "targeting and looking for new customers", which in turn will allow the Bentayga to keep its own position in the line-up.

Level-three autonomy falters but China fear pushes car makers on

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 05:00:00 +0100

Key backers BMW and Mercedes pull support for next level of self-driving tech, citing low uptake and use limitations

Level-three autonomy is on the ropes again – just as it looked like the dream of your car taking over the boring bits of driving was becoming a reality.

The two car makers that had finally put a 'hands-off, eyes-off' solution on the road, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, have both pulled support for the technology, returning it to limbo.

“We realised that the demand for this was not currently a stage where we could be profitable, and we have to be profitable,” BMW R&D chief Joachim Post said on the company’s annual results call in March.

Mercedes meanwhile won’t include its level-three tech on the updated S-Class.

Neither systems were comprehensive. A range of conditions had to be met, including the right type of road, the right weather, the right light levels, the right type of traffic and even the right country.

“The technology was very expensive and it had many limitations,” Pedro Pacheco, analyst at consultantcy Gartner, told Autocar. “On paper level-three autonomous driving sounds fantastic, but then you try it and it’s a disappointment.”

So that’s it, then? No catching flies on the M25? Well, not quite, because the car makers aren’t giving up. It’s not consumer push that’s driving them but fear.

“To be honest, today there is no demand from customers for level-three autonomous driving,” Philippe Brunet, R&D chief at the Renault Group, told journalists in March. “We have no one coming into the dealers saying: 'You know what? I'm only going to buy this car only if you offer me level three.'”

The fear is emanating from China. Brunet recalled a recent test of the latest consumer-level autonomous system there: “It was very tough driving conditions, a lot of pedestrians, bicycles, people everywhere. But in the 45 minutes it was perfectly okay – no interventions." He didn’t name the manufacturer but said this was in Hangzhou, home town of Renault partner Geely.

China doesn’t yet permit level-three autonomy, but what Brunet experienced, and where Chinese manufacturers are becoming increasingly strong, is so-called level two-plus-plus. That means car essentially drives itself everywhere, including cities, while the driver maintains vigilance to take over at any time.

“In China, if you don’t offer such features, you cannot sell a car,” Brunet said.

As Nio, Xpeng, Leapmotor, BYD and other Chinese car makers are going hell for leather to meet that demand, the systems keep getting better and better – and European car makers realise it’s only matter of time before Chinese cars with these abilities come here.

“They will bring it to Europe, and I believe that on the C-segment they will offer it for free,” Brunet said. “And when they will offer it for free, they will create the demand. This is what I'm afraid of.”

That's why Renault is working on level-three technology without any push from the consumer, with 2028 as a target introduction date.

Canvassing car buyers isn’t much good anyway, believes Pacheco: “You can't ask consumers about what they haven’t tried."

The failure of Mercedes and BMW to create demand for a premium product that could be expected to trickle down hasn’t daunted them. Instead they're doubling their efforts to provide the same level-two-plus-plus technology that Tesla offers with its Full Self Driving (FSD) Supervised system and the Chinese are busy perfecting.

“They're very attractive systems for customers. They’re in high demand,” BMW’s Post said.

Pacheco agrees: “Level two-plus-plus is where the big party is. This is where Tesla is, this is where the Chinese are."

Right now, the most advanced European systems are what’s described as level two-plus, meaning hands-on, eyes-off up to the speed limit but only on motorways.

Ford’s BlueCruise tech is a good example. The company recent expanded its offering to special editions of the Puma and Kuga, which get the system as standard rather the normal £17.99 monthly subscription.

Despite a lot of noise, getting any hands-off system approved in Europe is difficult. That’s changing after the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) endorsed a new set of standards for driver control assistance systems (DCAS), including allowing overtaking on dual carriageways without explicit driver confirmation.

That has given the Chinese hope that it can bring its systems over to Europe. Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng recently told investors that, following the DCAS regulation change, his company would bring its second-generation Visual Language Action (VLA) system over here by the end of the year.

The thorny issue of regulation remains, however. Tesla has been wrangling with Dutch authorities to give approval to its FSD Supervised system, from which it then hopes to quickly gain approval Europe-wide. Late in March, it said that it hoped 18 months of “intense” submissions would result in approval in April.

Tesla’s problem is that FSD is an end-to-end or ‘foundation’ AI machine-learning model, rather than a traditional rules-based system, so it makes decisions on the fly based on its learning.

“It means for every type of situation in existence in the regulation, they had to ask for an exemption and then prove that the system can perform well in that situation,” Pacheco explained.

Chinese makers like Xpeng also prefer end-to-end systems, but they have a different problem in that EU data protection law forbids training data from cars going back to China.

China enforces similar rules, so the high-tech driver assistance specialists have become very siloed. For example, BMW partners with Qualcomm in Europe but Momenta in China on its level-two-plus-plus system.

SAIC-owned MG acknowledges that it’s going to be harder to bring the sophisticated system that it offers in China to Europe.

“We are a little bit further behind on that in Europe,” European boss William Wang told Autocar. “If we work hard, we can catch up. We just needed to be more clever, take a long-term view and work hard.”

Chinese autonomy-focused software companies are setting up shop in Europe, including the favourite of the 'legacy' manufacturers, Momenta. Now they need to hoover up enough training data (essentially making computers watch driving videos) to train their software all over again for European driving.

Tesla is acknowledged to be the leader just in terms of data gathered, but questions still remain over the safety of the level-two-plus-plus systems.

BYD is under fire from owners in China that its God’s Eye system (now offered for free on all its cars there) suffers glitches, including missing highway exits and failing to stop for tollbooths, according to Bloomberg reporting.

In Europe, the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) flagged up “deep concerns” over changes to regulations by UNECE to allow level-two-plus-plus systems.

“These rules create a grey zone where the lines between assistance and automation are dangerously blurred,” Frank Mütze, automation specialist at the ETSC, said in a statement. “Asking a driver to monitor a complex machine for prolonged periods of time and then intervene in a split second when the system fails is a recipe for disaster.”

But European manufacturers are desperate not to be left behind in a race China has trained for years to win. AI learning has accelerated development in a way that couldn’t have been predicted five years ago.

“When AI technology comes, the world will change. In 10 years, half the cars in the street will be autonomous,” Wang predicted.

Level two-plus-plus is the gateway to level three, and when drivers are offered the ability to switch off while driving, car makers would be foolish to bet they will say no.

As ever with autonomous vehicles, the timelines are uncertain. But all it takes is a nod from the regulators and the flip of a switch. Car makers need to be ready.

The Metro 6R4 isn't the best Group B monster, but it is the coolest

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +0100

Just like your nan used to drive, except cooler, noisier and more terrifying

I have never hung art in my bedroom. I can never find anything that looks right: too cliché, too kitsch or too highbrow.

I have, however, always displayed a poster of a Metro 6R4, mid-slide. That, for me, is worth 100 Warhol soup cans or Mona Lisa parodies - even if my university housemates didn't have quite the same vision. The appeal of the 6R4 lies partly in the brilliance of its development brief.

For the sake of appeasing British Leyland's marketing bods, the company's Group B racer simply had to be based on a Metro. That brought virtues - a short wheelbase, boosting agility - but also barely any room for cramming in a title-worthy drivetrain. In retrospect, the sensible answer would have been to fit a huge turbo to a downsized engine, graft in a four-wheel-drive transfer case and call it a day.

Turbos were all the rage: Audi, Lancia, Renault and Mitsubishi were all at it, with the newfangled tech promising huge power. Austin Rover Motorsport could have followed easily.

But no. The engineers instead stuck two naturally aspirated fingers up at the new school and set to work on an all-new free-breathing V6, enlisting ex-Cosworth maestro David Wood. The thinking was that you could have sold a showroom full of Metros in the time it took a small engine to build turbo boost - then the engine would have grenaded.

Plus, all the ancillaries required to manage the extra heat and thirst for fuel would have added significant weight, upsetting the Metro's balance. The end result was indisputably a success: a masterpiece in aluminium revving to 9000rpm. It could produce 400bhp, but that's not really the point, because it's the sound that is punched indelibly into my consciousness.

As propaganda tools go, little is more effective than the sight and sound of a gargling, mid-mounted, highly strung six-pot echoing through a forest. The shriek of the Metro as it approached pummelled spectators from head to toe. It's Megadeth on four wheels.

Were the 6R4 anything but a Metro, we might never have been gifted that sound. A larger, heavier Rover or Austin might have meant turbocharging would have been an acceptable compromise, and the resulting soundtrack may have fallen flat.

Nor, for that matter, would it have been so utterly outrageous to look at. Those comically extended arches were functional, but they gave the 6R4 plenty of billboard space to facilitate colourful liveries, and its popularity with privateers elicited a smorgasbord of memorable designs. The works Computervision livery, Jimmy McRae's Rothmans scheme and the lurid P&O Ferries rallycrosser all come to mind.

But most of all I think it's the 6R4's cruel luck that gets me. While MG toiled away at making everything work, the rest of the field had properly figured out forced induction. By the time of the Metro 6R4's launch in 1985, its boosted competitors were rumoured to be nudging 600bhp. No matter how much more drivable or dependable the 6R4 might have been, its tardiness doomed it to sit on rallying's fringes. What could have been, if only it had arrived a year or two sooner?

That the 6R4 is still so fondly remembered by so many is testament to its single-minded genius. I fear that if I ever drove one I'd lose the will to live, knowing I'd never be able to buy it. Yet it remains right at the top of my bucket list. For now, watching old videos of Kris Meeke and Colin McRae chucking theirs around the streets of Donegal in a demo event will have to suffice.

'Track' day: We go green-laning in a Dacia Duster

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0100

Forget blasting down B-roads in a sports car - try some low speed green laning instead

It's a sunny weekend and I’m awake early, coffee in hand and up for an adventure. But while my normal go-to might be to jump in the sports car and blitz down some B-roads, I’ve got another idea in mind: let’s off-road.

I'm behind the wheel of a Dacia Duster. It has a five-speed manual gearbox, a 128bhp mild-hybrid powertrain and, most importantly for my Sunday jaunt, four-wheel drive.

Autocar photographer and former fellow south coast-dweller Jack Harrison pointed me in the direction of Corfe Castle in Dorset, which is where we now find ourselves.

Just half an hour from Poole, the landscape here is awash with green rolling hills as far as the eye can see. Heading down a narrow B-road, I turn onto a short gravel track, at the end of which I’m met with a large metal gate adorned with a sign that says I must shut it or the cows will escape.

It feels odd to be here with a car, but despite the odd walker staring quizzically at me, this is a perfectly legal byway I can carefully drive along.

There’s even a sign clearly saying: ‘Green Lane Association, byway open to all traffic.’ So I open the gate, drive through and close it behind me. We’re in.

Ahead lies our first test: a slight hill strewn with small craters and a herd of cows. I twist the mode selector to Lock (to lock the central differential into 4x4 mode) and off we go. And you know what? This is a lot easier than I was expecting.

Okay, it’s hardly the Moab desert, but the amount of grip I’m finding with the Duster is impressive. Its light steering, which I’m already a fan of on the road, allows for much-needed quick corrections – especially when I go into a pothole that I didn’t know was there and which throws me in the direction of what looks like the chief cow.

At least the brakes are also working well. It then dawns on me that the Duster has parking cameras that work up to 12mph, and I could have used those for pothole spotting.

Next up: some grass. I know, perilous. But it’s steep, and I can really see myself getting stuck halfway up. But once again I’ve underestimated the Duster. I know this isn’t the hardest piece of off-roading to tackle, yet the ease with which the Duster seems to dispatch Dorset’s grassy inclines is quite exceptional.

I breeze up and pull over at the top, feeling very kingly as I survey Corfe Castle below. As I get back in the car, I receive a funny ‘you shouldn’t be up here’ look from a couple of walkers, but given the heat of the day, perhaps it’s more a look of jealousy as I enjoy the Duster’s air-con-cooled cabin.

Hill descent mode on – just in case – and I reach the bottom of the slope and turn right. Ahead is a trail that is no wider than the Duster and a badly damaged track full of deep crevasse-like cavities.

Luckily, with a breakover angle of 24deg (that’s more than even a Jeep Wrangler has), I avoid scuffing the underside and push on through the next gate as branches begin chattering against the wing mirrors.

The Duster rides through the potholes, though, and while the gravel underwheel is compromising grip, there is still some to be found. Another gate leads to a steep gravel track, strewn with cows and with, concerningly, a rather perilous drop on one side.

While building the courage to continue a problem emerges: there’s no room to get out of the car to open said gate. As if by magic, a cyclist appears, and she very kindly opens the gate.

I thank her but when I go to pull gently away there’s only wheelspin. That’s embarrassing. Try again: wheelspin accompanied by the smell of burning clutch. Then I notice the Duster has defaulted back to its normal driving mode and unlocked the central diff after I switched it off momentarily before the cyclist showed up.

I’m a dummy. I reset it to Lock and, as if by some more magic, I’m able to chug up the hill, eyes fixed ahead and very much not on the cliff edge to the left. I reach the top and, again, stop to admire another beautiful view.

This really is a great way to spend a sunny weekend. On my way back down I’m feeling really quite triumphant, but then my ego takes a punch to the throat as a ratty 2010-plate Volkswagen Touareg comes bounding up the trail I had ascended so carefully.

I move over so it can pass and the excited pair inside give me a wave as they crash their way up. That was definitely a wave goodbye rather than a wave hello…

After passing my herd of bovine best mates from earlier, I reach the entrance gate and get out to inspect the Duster: no scratches, no marks, no dents. Brilliant.

To think I’ve just spent my afternoon tackling an array of routes – some challenging, some steep – on a beautiful day with gorgeous views, and all while spending less than £15 in fuel (which includes getting here from home and back) in my daily driver that costs as little as £26,000 is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

While those more moneyed than I can afford to drive their Porsche 911s to their local circuit for a track day, rag it around and then drive home, this is my budget version – and I don’t need a new set of tyres afterwards. Next time I’ll just remember to take a picnic.

The 'grandmaster of kit cars' is back after 37 years

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 07:00:00 +0100

Famed maker of kit cars, many of them amphibious, Dutton is going back to its roots after a hiatus

Even if you're not clued up on the world of kit cars, the name Dutton may strike a chord of recognition.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the firm was the world's largest manufacturer of kit cars by volume, leading founder Tim Dutton to be described as the 'grandmaster of kit cars'.

Now Dutton has just unveiled his first new kit car in 37 years: the Phaeton 5. As the name suggests, there were four previous incarnations of the model until Tim became tired of the kit car scene at the end of the '80s after selling more than 8000 kits - an average of 363 per year from 1967 to 1989.

Why go to the trouble of developing a new kit car all these years later? "Why not? I can't retire. What on earth would I do?" says Dutton. His wit, as well as his energy levels, are just as they were when he started out building kit cars in a shed behind his mum's pub in Sussex 59 years ago.

Dutton took a short sabbatical after he packed up first time around, then decided that he would like to buy an amphibious car - as you do. Not satisfied with what was available, he decided to build his own, and to sell it in kit or turnkey form. Starting in 1995, there came a succession of Dutton amphibians: the Mariner, Commander, Amphijeep, Reef and Surf.

In this second chapter of his remarkable career, he sold a grand total of 282 such vehicles.

There was always something quite spectacular about driving out of the River Arun, up the jetty and parking outside Dutton's favourite waterside tea room in Littlehampton. He spent 28 years building these amphibians until selling the project to his agent in Poland in 2023.

Dutton then spent a short period buying and restoring some of his old machines (both road and river-flavoured) until he and his right-hand man of 15 years, Jack Gorski, decided that was too boring and they should start building new cars again.

The fruit of their labour is the Phaeton 5. Looking striking in vivid green (or, to give it the correct name, Lamborghini Verde Scandal; it's actually gel coat rather than paint), the Mk5 is larger than its Mk4 brother. Although with a 37-year age gap, it's more like a grandfather, because Dutton has recognised that people have grown larger over the years. What was snug back then is decidedly overly tight for many of us these days.

The Phaeton 5 is based on the Mk3 Mazda MX-5. Hiroshima's roadsters have become very popular donors for the kit car industry in recent years, and this iteration, produced from 2005 until 2015, is now the most common pick. You can use any soft-top Mk3 variant: for Dutton's new demonstrator, he found a suitable facelifted 2.0-litre Tech Sport model at a salvage auction.

In the case of the Phaeton 5, other than hardware (like the bodyshell, doors, bootlid, bonnet, windscreen etc) that Dutton supplies in his kit package, everything is from the donor car. This includes the seats (heated leather in this case), switchgear, wheels, tyres, you name it.

A bonus is that you can sell the Mazda parts you don't need; Dutton is adamant that you can recoup around £1000 doing so.

Out on the road, the 160bhp 2.0-litre atmo four feels lively, and the fact it comes with the six-speed manual gearbox is another bonus. The Phaeton 5 weighs almost half as much as the MX-5 donor so there's an instant performance boost. And thanks to the larger cockpit dimensions of the new model, it's easy to find a comfortable driving position, with plenty of adjustment, fore and aft.

If you wish, you can use the basic 1.8-litre version of the Mk3 MX-5, but my advice is to go for the 2.0-litre: you get 35 extra horsepower, an extra gear ratio, a limited-slip differential plus all the other niceties that the Sport model came with as standard.

When it comes to cost, the comprehensive kit comes in at £9990 (including VAT). Dutton reckons it's easy to find a suitable 2.0-litre Sport donor for around £800. Once you factor in the rebate from selling the unwanted bits and bobs, your Phaeton 5 can be on the road for less than ten grand, which is great value.

There are only three possible extras: a soft top, side screens/doors and a non-standard RAL gel-coat colour. Even going for all three of those only adds about £1200. He will even build you one from around £14,300 (including VAT).

Volumes may be much smaller than they once were, but building and driving your own Dutton kit car should be as enjoyable as it ever was.

Written by Steve Hole

The best movie car chases are untouched by CGI

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:00:00 +0100

Hollywood has a realism problem... and only real stunts can fix it

Few things have split opinion in the Autocar office in recent memory like the 2025 movie F1.

While some of my colleagues enjoyed the whimsical, engagingly dramatised nature of Brad Pitt's motorsport blockbuster, I found it about as thrilling as watching a DRS train lap Monaco 50 times.

I thought it was unrealistic, corny and predictable, and some of the more appalling snippets of dialogue made me (and other members of the audience) laugh out loud.

But while the storyline failed to impress, I couldn't fault director Joseph Kosinski and his team for the way in which the movie was filmed: the racing sequences, shown from the perspectives of driver and audience, were epic.

Every on-track duel invoked the adrenaline-fuelled thrill of the very best movie car chases, which got me thinking: what are the key ingredients for an exhilarating hot pursuit? This is subjective, of course, but for me a good car chase needs three things: realistic stunts, exciting cinematography and the complete absence of computer-generated imagery (CGI).

Far-fetched crashes and disproportionate explosions do nothing for me. They're used as a desperate attempt to entertain when really they achieve the exact opposite, dulling any sense of believability. In many ways, the rise of CGI has been the downfall of the Fast and Furious franchise.

Back in the early 2000s, these were car movies first and action movies second. Now they're just a series of utterly impossible stunts and chase scenes with some priceless hypercars thrown in as support actors (and Vin Diesel mumbling "family" every 10 minutes).

This is why I get a more tangible thrill from movie car chases of the past: well-choreographed sequences with real cars, real stunts and the unmistakable sense that a human is actually behind the wheel deliver a visceral experience that we car lovers can enjoy.

Take 1998's Ronin, for example. The chief of police in Paris told the production crew they could basically do what they liked, so stunt co-ordinator and former racer Jean-Claude Lagniez ensured the cars were really doing 100-125mph during the chase.

In fact, he scripted the entire chase, chose the cars and planned how the accidents would happen. The pivotal scene in the tunnel was shot at night and filmed at full speed because director John Frankenheimer (who had in 1966 directed the excellent Grand Prix) refused to speed it up in the edit, as he wanted it to feel real.

The details are spot on, too: there are no silly misplaced gearchanges, no randomly cut scenes of the hero accelerating hard while already driving flat out, no slide-whistle barrel rolls.

That's what makes this fine example of the genre (and other car chases in movies like the Jason Bourne series, Quantum of Solace and Baby Driver) so captivating, because you feel like you're in the passenger seat with the protagonists. They're real, they're exciting to watch and they ensure that we petrolheads leave the cinema with something to talk about, no matter the quality of the rest of the film.

Look at Bullitt (1968): I must have watched the entirety of that 11-minute chase 30 times but couldn't tell you anything about the characters involved, nor what the movie is really about. What a classic.

Beat the energy crisis: The ultimate EV home-charging setup tested

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0100

We fit a a hybrid solar system to our garage to see how much money we can save on charging our Kia e-Niro

Installing solar panels may have seemed like an expensive luxury to most of us some time ago. But now it seems like a way out of the fuel crisis hitting the UK.

I had made the switch to EVs in 2021, and although it wasn’t part of a master plan, suddenly the idea of turning the house into a mini power station became strangely compelling.

If a solar system is producing more energy than can be used there and then, EV batteries are an ideal place to store it.

Solar systems come in various types. The most popular option is to install a hybrid system, integrating inverter, solar panels and battery storage together. The inverter also manages the flow of power between house, batteries and, when excess power is produced, back into the grid.

Batteries can also be charged from the grid on a low tariff, then the power used during peak periods, but they’re not that big, which is why EVs with their huge storage capacity are an ideal accessory.

My starting point was to check the household energy bills, which told me that over the past 12 months, including charging two EVs at home, we had used around 6500kWh (units) of electricity.

For solar systems to be effective, they ideally need to be facing south or thereabouts, and my garage faces south-south-west and is free of shade for most of the day. So far so good, and I thought it might be possible to generate around 6000kWh a year.

Interest-free loans for solar systems are available from the government in Scotland, where I live, via the Energy Savings Trust, but even using a commercial low-interest loan would still stack up. To qualify, I had to use an MCS-certified installer (Microgeneration Certification Scheme), who should adhere to a set of standards for installation and equipment.

I opted for hybrid (solar plus batteries) and my chosen installer, Locogen Energy Services, came back with a quote that included several pages of information such as expected daily energy flows for the area I live in, system performance predictions and environmental benefits.

Locogen’s specification was for 16 420W solar panels giving an ‘installed capacity’ of 6.72kW capable of producing an estimated 6008kWh (units) per year.

They would be hooked up to a 5kW-rated Solis hybrid inverter to convert DC electricity from the panels to AC, a 48V, 4.8kWh Pylontech lithium-iron-phosphate battery (Locogen recommended two of these and I would upgrade later) and a wi-fi dongle to connect the system to the phone app via the Solis cloud.

That lot would cost £11,000, with a forecast payback period of 5.9 years and a predicted return on investment of 682%. On top of that, I had to pay a fee of £300 for G99 approval from the distribution network operator. Approval is required if connecting anything larger than a 3.86kW generating system to the grid.

Once it’s fitted, you can either forget about it or continually obsess over the app and, naturally, I chose the second option. The system feeds the home first, then the batteries and then anything left over is fed back to the grid.

An Ofgem thing called the Smart Export Guarantee means home owners get paid anything from around 5p to 15p per unit, so long as you sign up to it. At best, that’s less than half a typical electricity tariff today so it’s important to use what you make, not give it away on the cheap.

This is where EVs come into their own, with their large batteries ready to take on any excess. When the solar system is at full power during the day, the house may be drawing only a few hundred watts, and once the solar batteries are fully charged, the rest will be exported.

Rather than see several kilowatts of energy flowing into the grid, I leave the family Kia e-Niro plugged into the 13-amp trickle charger. If the sun is shining and a quick look at the Solis app confirms there’s energy to spare, I turn charging on and off using Kia’s UVO app.

Does it work? To break even against monthly loan repayments, we need to generate and use an average of 226kWh per month.

Typically we use around 330 of a total 380 generated. The rest (13%) was exported and I need to reduce that, but we’re still ahead by more than £50.

The day before this was written, a cloudless day yielded 34kWh of electricity and a good chunk of that ended up in the EV, so roll on summer.

Prelude v Golf v Prius: Which £40k hybrid is frugal AND fun?

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Honda's coupé is back after 25 years, this time playing a hybrid tune. Can it stand out?

Great rivals aren't in the habit of doing each other favours.

Would Borg and McEnroe have lent each other a racket? David Coulthard says Michael Schumacher once let him borrow a spare racing helmet.

But what if Damon Hill had asked? You have to wonder, therefore, if Toyota actually considered Honda a great rival when in 1978 - in an act so widely reported as an 'amicable transfer' as surely to have been how the parties directly involved described it - the rights to a certain model name trademark that Toyota happened to own were signed over to its domestic-market competitor.

That's how the Honda Prelude got its name. Toyota's way of 'amicably' acknowledging Honda's penchant for model titles with musical themes, supposedly. I don't buy it. Of all of those (and between the Ballade, Concerto, Quintet, Jazz and Beat there would be plenty), only the Accord existed in 1978. Not enough established precedent, surely. There must have been some other quid pro quo.

At any rate, it was the spark of life for a line of mid-sized, front-drive coupés that eventually brought some interesting new technologies to affordable levels of the new car market throughout the 1980s and 1990s - only to bow out in 2001. The Prelude had blooded mechanical four-wheel steering and an early form of front-axle torque vectoring before it left the stage, as well as benefiting from Honda's celebrated VTEC combustion technology.

So long was the hiatus that the car subsequently took, however, that Honda had to re-register the Prelude trademark in the North American market in 2023. While some attentive hacks noticed, few seemed to know whether to be excited or not. The sixth-generation Prelude duly arrived anyway, every bit as bold as its various predecessors - albeit in rather different ways. Here in Europe, it's re-entering a coupé segment from which its competitors have almost universally fled.

And it's doing so with a car that doesn't have a rasping multi-cylinder engine with which to tempt buyers, nor even a high-revving four-cylinder VTEC screamer. It's doing so with a hybrid. Can that work? Time to take a view. Twenty-five years ago, back when the world was still getting used to the original Honda Insight, you wouldn't have given this strategy a prayer. But in 2026? Anything's possible.

Bring on the rivals

There has always been an alternative streak about the Prelude, so it didn't seem suitable to take a conventional approach when picking rivals for it. As it happened, BMW was unable to supply a BMW 2 Series Coupe, but the Bavarian is a rear-driven option with a much more traditional longways-mounted combustion engine anyway, whereas the Prelude is, and has always been, a front-drive progressive.

So we summoned two front-driven rivals to provide some useful context - both also hybrids, but one of them certainly not a car that any interested driver might have considered until its latest, rather transformative, reimagination. Honda Prelude, meet the Volkswagen Golf GTE and the Toyota Prius Plug-in. And who could say this isn't the perfect group test cast when the Prius and Prelude - from some angles, at least - look so eerily similar?

The sheer spaceship-like rakishness of the Toyota surprised everybody when we first laid eyes on it three and a half years ago. It remains shocking enough even today, mostly because you see so few of them. That the Honda effortlessly outshines the more humdrum Volkswagen Golf GTE is as predictable as it is wholly irrefutable when they're parked next to each other. But that it also manages to put such a daring-looking car as the Prius in the shade - and it does - says much more.

The Prelude's proportions are fundamentally better, even if it's not quite as original as the Toyota, borrowing noticeably from one or two other manufacturers' copybooks. It's a fine-looking car all the same, elegant but quietly purposeful, classic yet progressive, with just enough bulk and definition in the right areas.

That's its first test aced. What about the spec-sheet tussle? It's important to note for starters that both of its competitors here are plug-in hybrids, whereas the Prelude isn't. It's not a huge technical Rubicon. The Honda's powertrain is a primarily series-hybrid-style, range-extender system, with an electric motor that does most of the grunt work, backed up by a 2.0-litre Atkinson-cycle petrol engine that mostly runs as a generator but can connect to the wheels via planetary gearing when switching to higher-constant-load, parallel-hybrid running.

Pretty much exactly the same is true of the Toyota, except that the Prius's electric motor is marginally less powerful than the Prelude's and it has a much larger lithium-ion drive battery from which it can draw, for an electric range of a little over 50 miles. The Volkswagen Golf GTE, meanwhile, is the only car here with a conventional multi-speed automatic gearbox; it has the largest drive battery, by some margin; and it carries the most bulk.

Despite it being the most powerful car here on a total system output basis, it also uses the least powerful electric motor of the three contenders. It doesn't ever run as an 'electric-first' series hybrid. In the Golf, when the engine's running, it's driving. Will that make it more familiar? Ultimately more convincing as a driver's car, perhaps? We'll see.

As far as interiors go, what the Golf surrenders to the Prius and Prelude in low-slung sleekness it makes up for with usability and space. Honda's hatchback-style bootlid gives it almost as much cargo space as the Toyota (264 litres versus 284 litres), although the Prius's back seats are not only much easier to access but also notably more spacious once you're in them. Teenagers and smaller adults could travel comfortably enough in the back of the Toyota, whereas in the Honda you would hesitate to offer a back seat to anyone over the age of 10.

The Golf GTE is, basically, 'just like a Golf': versatile, functional, neat, unassuming; an entirely everyday item. Sitting in it, you feel considerably less low-slung and 'ready for launch' than in either of the other cars and the layout of the controls and displays ahead of you looks and is a lot more conventional (and that's not in every respect a bad thing).

What about performance?

There was a fair bit of uproar when the Prelude was announced on the 'Made Greater, Again' side of the Atlantic, I understand. Over there, it offers a system output of 200bhp, which is less than some old versions of the car left with 25 years ago. Hence the barracking. Well, because of European emissions regulations, we get the car with its petrol engine turned down further still, with only 181bhp. And yet the UK and wider European uproar has been notable by its absence, hasn't it? What a wonderfully mature lot we are.

Honda doesn't actually claim a total system, engine-clutched-on, parallel-series torque figure, but I would estimate that it must be well beyond 250lb ft, because the Prelude certainly feels brisk. Not quite top-level hot hatchback fast, but quick enough to make a climbing, twisting, uneven mountain road in the Rhondda nicely interesting to set about. It becomes clear, quite quickly, that this car's hybrid powertrain needn't be any obstacle to your enjoyment of an otherwise impressive driver's car. It needn't be the big, hairy fly in your otherwise tasty, peppery wholefood salad. It goes well.

It's intuitive, and moderately engaging with it. It even sounds quite good, not least because the hybrid system does a clever impression of a paddle-shift automatic gearbox. This is possible because most of the time - and until you're using the last inch or so of throttle pedal travel, as it turns out - the Prelude's electric motor is potent enough to meet the performance demands you're placing on the hybrid system by itself.

That leaves the combustion engine free to basically provide audible accompaniment. Honda has realised that as long as the engine is working to a certain crank speed, then it's generating enough voltage to keep the battery and motor topped up, and it can literally just pretend to be a conventional paddle-shift automatic. It can rev up and then 'shift', time and again, as if it were connected to a real multi-speed automatic gearbox and then the front wheels, even though it's not - well, not necessarily. It can even give you a manual mode.

As long as the software calibration is clever enough, you might never know the difference. So is it? Well, there's evidently a minimum crank speed that the combustion engine would seem to need to hit in order for the car to produce full power, and maximum thrust, beyond about 30mph. Here, the electric motor clearly isn't quite grunty enough all on its own.

What this means on the road is that the Prelude is more convincing if you leave it in 'D' (or else just stop short of using absolutely full power) than it is in paddle-shift manual mode. That's because the car won't quite hold a 'high gear' at full load. It needs to rev; needs to 'downshift'. It's a bit like a real auto with a slightly annoying habit of kicking down, and without a properly 'locked in' manual mode.

Is that better than the Prius powertrain's idea of high performance? You would say so - and by some distance. In the Prius, you can't even pretend to pick a gear. There are no paddles. It's a surprisingly quick car, with lots of accessible torque, but if you want it to go fast, it's that 'elastic band' delivery or nothing.

The Golf GTE's powertrain gives the Honda some tougher competition, which is precisely why it's in our line-up. You can actually select gears here for real. There's also significantly more power on tap in the GTE, and stronger roll-on performance. The Golf's powertrain ought, surely, to show the Prelude's up as a transparent charlatan. Well, here's the thing: it doesn't.

The Prelude's impression of a paddle-shift auto 'box is actually good enough to make the GTE's dual-clutch automatic seem slow-witted and clunky. Philosophically, you might well detest that idea, but in practice, I couldn't deny it. The Honda's make-believe upshifts are instant, the lack of interruption in the power delivery accompanying them a little strange but not lastingly problematic at all.

In the end, the Golf seems like a performance car fraud more often than the Prelude because of the way it insists on continuing to shut down its engine under light loads and when braking, to restart it again only seconds later, even when you're using Sport mode and manual mode on the gearbox. The Golf is quicker, and its powertrain is ultimately more controllable, yet it's no more intuitive or engaging in an aggregated sense. Somehow, it has plenty of 'computer says no' moments all of its own.

A touch of class

So the Prelude's hybrid system is worthy of it - worthy of a mature, versatile and sophisticated sort of driver's car definitely, and though it might be outpunched by its rivals here, it certainly isn't outclassed. Which, if this were a 4x100m athletics relay race, would hand the baton to its chassis narrowly in the lead, and the field's favourite on the anchor leg. What happens next is predictable, yet plain as day.

The Honda is not tetchily firm-riding or bristling with dynamic intent but it does handle and steer like a car with less bulk, a wider stance and a lower centre of gravity than either the Volkswagen or Toyota.

And that's not all. The Prelude uses Honda Civic Type R axle hardware to conjure its particular blend of grip, stability, poise and feel, but it uses it differently. The effect is undoubtedly less touring car yobby in its feel, but little less dynamically impressive than the Civic. The weight, pace and feel in the steering are really sweetly blended, so it turns in and holds a line through a fast bend very intuitively and precisely. There's an assured, measured sort of steady-state balance about the chassis.

It's happy to be hurried and has grip to spare, and taut but fluent damping at speed that can filter inputs without any heave or any abiding adverse sense of excess mass.

But it's happier at an eight-and-a-half-tenths pace, at which you can soak in more of its subjective and tactile qualities and, meantime, also be frustrated a little less by what limitations the car's powertrain has. The Golf? It feels firmer-sprung at low speed but ultimately quite starkly taller and heavier, with more pronounced roll when changing direction, and bigger deflections over lumps and bumps. In isolation, these things probably wouldn't register, but having a lighter, leaner, lower-slung coupé close at hand puts them squarely in the spotlight.

And the Prius? We had a bottom-tier model on 17in wheels, which you wouldn't choose for a car that you wanted real handling appeal from. But, mechanical grip level apart, it actually did okay. It handled with more immediacy than the Golf and had a more supple country road ride with an easier, more lenient but effective brand of body control around the national speed limit. This is certainly a car that you can enjoy a B-road flit in and its low body profile achieves more for it these days, clearly, than simply cutting drag.

But neither the Volkswagen nor the Toyota has a driving experience that comes together quite as convincingly as does the Honda's. The Prius has most of the looks and all of the pace, but not quite enough driver focus, in the end, to get on the required level. Given its perennially responsible positioning, we can perhaps forgive it that.

The Golf GTE has even more of the necessary pace, and enough sporting intent. But, despite having so much more power, its powertrain is missing a knockout punch, while its relatively humble hatchback chassis - in this context, which is undeniably tough on it - is ill-placed to make up the shortfall.

The Prelude, by contrast, feels like an encouragingly rounded, widely talented, surprisingly sophisticated package. Its powertrain isn't perfect, but it does more than hold its end up. It isn't special or spectacular, but it is well integrated, thoroughly modern and fiendishly clever. If mainstream driver's cars are going to survive the next 10 years or so, you can't help thinking, cars like this will probably show the way.

1st: Honda Prelude A much-needed champion for the affordable front-drive coupé's cause, the Prelude has true driver appeal that its innovative hybrid powertrain feels worthy of.

2nd: Volkswagen Golf GTE A great electrified compromise for everyday use, with some added driver appeal to sweeten the deal, though not enough to lift it to a truly sporting level.

3rd: Toyota Prius Prius brings much more to the table dynamically than any of its predecessors and looks like it means business. Still lacks a really engaging character.

	HONDA PRELUDE e:HEV	VOLKSWAGEN GOLF GTE	TOYOTA PRIUS PLUG-IN
Rating	Four out of five stars	Three and a half out of five stars	Three and a half out of five stars
Price	£40,995	£40,140	£37,895
Engine	4 cyls in line, 1993cc, petrol, plus 181bhp electric motor	4 cyls in line, 1498cc, turbocharged, petrol, plus 108bhp electric motor	4 cyls in line, 1987cc, petrol, plus 161bhp electric motor
Power	181bhp	268bhp	220bhp
Torque	na	na	na
Gearbox	e-CVT, FWD	6-spd dual-clutch automatic, FWD	e-CVT, FWD
Kerb weight	1480kg	1670kg	1545kg
0-62mph	8.2sec	6.6sec	6.8sec
Top speed	117mph	143mph	110mph
Battery	1.05kWh (total)	25.7/19.7kWh (total/usable)	13.6/10.8kWh (total/usable)
Economy	54.3mpg	212.4mpg	403.5mpg
Electric range	na	81 miles	53 miles
CO2, tax band	117g/km, 29%	8g/km, 6%	17g/km, 9%

WATCH: Aston Martin Valhalla | Will it help Aston turn a profit? | Autocar

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:43:15 +0100

We drive the new £850,000 Aston Martin hypercar - could it take the fight to Ferrari and win? In our video we find out

This is the Aston Martin Valhalla, and Matt Prior drives it here on road and track. It arrives at a difficult time for Aston. The company lost nearly £500m last year will have to cut jobs and costs in an effort to turn things around. It needs to sell more cars, too and increase their average transaction price. Which is where the Valhalla comes in. This is an £850,000 mid-engined supercar/hypercar and they plan to build 999 of them. It has a 4.0-litre Mercedes-AMG V8 and three electric motors, to make a total of 1064bhp. But is it any good? Join us as we find out - please click the video player above to watch.

Why tyre wear is the next big emissions battleground

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:00:00 +0100

New onboard vacuum devices allow engineers to separate tyre dust from brake and road debris in real-time

Tyre wear has always been a challenge for the people who manufacture them.

Too much of it is undesirable from a value-for-money point of view, but also because as tyres wear so does the road surface, producing tiny particulates that pose an emissions problem.

Friction between a tyre's contact patch and the road is an obvious cause of wear but, says Continental, many factors contribute to the generation of tyre and road wear particles.

According to Continental and the European Tyre and Rim Technical Organisation, these factors include (in order of rising influence on wear), weather, temperature, tyre design, vehicle, road surface, route topology and, most of all, driving behaviour.

It's a subject that major tyre makers such as Continental and Michelin have been studying closely for years and pressure has grown to find improvements. Euro 7 emissions regulations are expected to introduce limits on tyre wear emissions in the EU from 2028.

The system consists of a vacuum device mounted directly behind a driven wheel at road level to literally suck up particles. In conjunction with advanced particle sensors, the kit can detect even the finest of airborne particles behind the wheels and the system can work out whether the particles come from the tyres, the road surface or the brakes.

The data is then correlated with other factors such as driving dynamics, surface and weather conditions.

Michelin released details of a vacuum system for measuring small emitted particles from tyres in 2024 and Continental more recently gave some insight into a project completed at the end of last year called 'Online analysis of airborne tyre wear particles at the point of origin and differentiation from other sources', or OLRAP for short.

It has also developed a technique with the Technical University of Braunschweig for accurately measuring tyre wear and the generation of airborne particles.

The data collected by the system includes details of the quantity, size and structure of particles and is fed back into Continental's tyre development programme to optimise tyre design and compound formulation more precisely.

The latest 'multisampler device' enables the capture of particles relating to specific types of driving, separating those collected when cornering from those while driving in a straight line, for example. The research team says it identified clear correlations between particle concentration and speed profiles as well as the effect of longitudinal and lateral acceleration on tyre wear.

Ultimately, reducing particulate levels from tyre and road wear will not be allowed to compromise safety and, as Continental points out, the tyre's primary job is to "transfer vehicle forces".

Grip is achieved through friction and that inevitably leads to wear of both tyre and road surface. A certain level is unavoidable to ensure safety-critical features remain uncompromised.

Audi boss: Concept C going ahead despite Porsche uncertainty

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:08:51 +0100

'C-Sport' – production version of Concept C – remains on track despite troubled development of Porsche twin

Audi boss Gernot Döllner has reiterated to Autocar that a production version of the Concept C will arrive in 2027, following reports placing its future in doubt.

The new electric coupé, the design of which has echoes of the fabled TT, will sit on a new sports car platform called PPE Sport, which has been jointly developed by Audi and sibling brand Porsche.

At the end of last year, Porsche dramatically scaled back its EV plans (at a cost of €3.1 billion), leading to reports that it could cancel the next-generation 718 Boxster and Cayman-consequently throwing the future of the Concept C into doubt.

But Döllner sent a letter to Audi employees earlier this year reiterating the company's commitment to what is known internally as the C-Sport, and he has now insisted to Autocar that the project remains on track.

Asked how Audi could deliver the production car if Porsche's plans for the PPE Sport platform had changed, Döllner said: "Porsche will stay to that platform. We will be able to bring that car to the market in 2027, and we are working intensively and very positively together with Porsche to make that car happen.

"We already released the data [design] of the exterior and the interior, so everything is in a good way."

Döllner's comments don't necessarily mean that Porsche will progress with the electric 718 duo. As previously reported by Autocar, Porsche is looking at reverse-engineering the PPE Sport platform to accommodate a combustion engine, so that petrol models could be sold alongside or even instead of EVs.

This platform is a heavily customised version of the PPE one used by the latest Audi and Porsche electric SUVs, such as the Q6 E-tron and Macan Electric.

It features a stressed, load-bearing battery pack housed behind the driver, where the engine would be in a traditional mid-engined sports car, enabling a flat floor and a far lower driving position.

Honda Super-N

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:37:56 +0100

Honda brings its £20,000 electric kei car to the UK as a Twingo rival – with 'manual' gearbox and exhaust note The Honda Super-N, a new compact EV inspired by the 1980s City Turbo II, is coming to the UK this July with prices starting under £20,000.Engineered on the brand's lightweight N Series 'Kei' car platform, the city car features an e-Axle that delivers 63bhp (95bhp via boost mode), a simulated seven-speed transmission and artificial engine noises to mimic the feel of a combustion-engined car. The Super-N offers a combined electric range of 128 miles, extending to 199 miles on the urban cycle.Honda UK boss Rebecca Adamson says the car is not intended as a successor for the dearly departed Honda E – despite the obvious visual and conceptual links.It's still "a very funky, cute Honda," she acknowledges, but "not based on the E in any way." Instead, Honda’s second take on a funky electric city car for the UK is a hot version of the N-One E it sells in Japan – which is, itself, based on the petrol-powered N-One kei car.In Japan, it’s called the Super-One but it can’t take that name here because a national karting league has the rights to it. There’s also a taller, longer MPV version that has sliding doors and is endlessly adorable, but there's no word on that coming to the UK – yet.Are you keeping up? The long and (very) short of it is that the Super-N measures just 3.4m nose to tail, has a 2.5m wheelbase, weighs a little over 1300kg, seats four and looks oh-so very cute, even in the feistier performance garb it’ll wear in the UK – part of a package of market-specific adaptations that also brings a fake manual gearbox and fruity ‘engine’ note.

12,000 miles in a HR-V: the bad, the brilliant and the very noisy

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0100

Clever 'Magic Seats', a blissfully button-heavy dashboard... and an infuriating transmission

Like many others, I've fallen into the trap of thinking that most cars on the road today look exactly the same. Even as a card-carrying member of the motoring nerd community, I often have to squint to spot the subtle differences that mark out, say, a Cupra from a Citroën - and there's no category I struggle with more than the B-segment crossover.

A Toyota C-HR could be a Nissan Juke from a distance, and I've confidently misidentified a Volkswagen T-Roc as a Renault Captur on a murky evening. The humble Honda HR-V has always stood out from the crowd, though. As it should: few seem to remember that it holds rank alongside the Matra Rancho as patient zero of the crossover curse.

Should your memory need jogging, it arrived in 1999 as a three-door SUV built on the platform of the Honda Logo (when did you last see one of them, eh?), with space shuttle-esque looks that seemed more at home in the streets of London than the lanes of Wales.

Now in its third generation (the second one, based on the Honda Jazz, was a perfectly fine car but no trailblazer like its predecessor), the HR-V comes exclusively with a front-wheel-drive hybrid powertrain, badged e:HEV. And it has just been treated to a mid-life update to enhance its design appeal still further, receiving a less rounded grille, a reworked front bumper, sharper headlights and some extra body shaping, particularly down the sides.

The Urban Grey Pearl example that has just turned up outside my house is in range-topping Advance Style Plus trim, differing from the standard Elegance by way of an electric tailgate, a heated steering wheel, adaptive headlights and a panoramic roof, among other niceties such as a wireless phone charger and uprated audio.

It has been optioned with the Obscura Black Pack, meaning that the sharp seven-bar grille, sizeable mirrors and lower bumpers front and rear are finished in - you guessed it - black, rather than being body-coloured. Paired with the black roof (which is something every crossover seems to feature now), it puts the finishing touches to what is already a surprisingly good-looking car.

I love how those new headlights seem to poke out from under the bonnet and the Hofmeister – like kink where the C-pillar meets the bodywork. Other visual curiosities include three dots hidden in the rear light bar surround to act as reversing lights - a quirky but not overcomplicated solution to the problem of where to put the bulbs, which I like - and blue trim on the lower doors, which I can't help thinking looks like someone has left the pre-delivery protection film on.

I like the interior even more. It's refreshing to see a major manufacturer such as Honda forgo a screen-heavy approach: the 9.0in touchscreen in the HR-V is as large as I'd ever want one to be. On first impressions, the infotainment system is decent, being easy to navigate and quick to respond to your commands.

And the leftmost portion of the driver's display can be customised to show just about anything you would want to know about the car, ranging from average journey speed to fuel economy, and has incredibly smooth graphics. Even more welcome is that the HR-V still has physical climate controls.

Yes, there are still some cars on sale in the UK in 2026 that don't force you to try to navigate a tablet strapped to a dashboard in order to keep the cabin at a comfortable temperature. They're nice to use too, being helpfully ridged so your fingers don't slip off. Everything else related to the climate is controlled by individual buttons along the same interior line.

The cabin is full of materials that are pleasing to the eye and to the touch. Faux leather gives the dashboard and seats a bit of contrast, with the latter finished mostly in a soft fabric. I've long been an advocate of fabric seats over leather ones, which get too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.

It's much the same in the capacious rear, where the bench consists of Honda's Magic Seats - a clever design where the base can be folded up to create a massive extra storage area in the footwells. The boot is among the larger ones in this class, too.

Under the bonnet is a 1.5-litre four-cylinder atmo petrol engine with 106bhp, and a pair of electric motors bring the total output up to 129bhp, with power being fed to the wheels through an e-CVT. Those three letters strike fear into the heart of anyone who cares about cabin isolation, but I was impressed with the smoothness of the similar transmission in the Toyota Corolla hybrid I ran a while back, so it might not be a problem.

There is a lot to like about the HR-V, and the aim of running one over the coming months is to see if this minor update is enough to keep it shining in the sea of blandness that is the crossover market.

Motorway life

The HR-V has been racking up the miles lately and, by and large, I'm impressed with it as a motorway mile-muncher. But then I'd have been surprised if it wasn't up to the job. I've always been happy enough in small cars on the motorway, so what's the point in something this (relatively) big if it isn't a nice place to watch the world slide by at 70mph?

The cabin is as quiet as you would hope at motorway speeds, with minimal audible intrusion from either the wind or the road. In fact, it feels almost as peaceful to be in as a BMW X3 - an impressive accolade for a car that's half the price. Being a Honda, nothing rattles and nothing shakes, making it a pleasant place to be.

The ride at higher speeds is great too. It's not bad at low speeds – bumps and potholes are soaked up well even around town – but once you hit the faster roads, it smooths out to a fantastic degree. In a world of paving-slab-stiff rides in modern cars, the HR-V is more akin to a soft pillow.

However, there is an elephant in the room – or, rather, under the bonnet. It's the e-CVT gearbox's fault, really. It seems to change its stepped gears almost at random, revving up the 1.5-litre four-pot in an aurally unpleasant way. As you would imagine, this gets old quite quickly, especially on hillier routes.

Living in South Wales, my drives to work almost always require me to cut around the north or south sides of the Welsh valleys, neither of which is a particularly flat drive from my sea-level home. The south-side route requires a long stint on the M4 over some sizeable hills and the north option means a drive on the freshly rebuilt and absolutely beautiful Heads of the Valleys road – the highest dual carriageway in Wales, peaking at over 400m above sea level. Whichever route I take, though, the HR-V voices its protest.

The noise of the engine tends to sound like someone is undertaking a heavy DIY session a couple of houses away and it is especially noticeable because everything else is so quiet. The curious petrolhead within me is intrigued by the way the car shifts between the gears that its series-parallel hybrid set-up allows it to create, but if I was less interested in such things, it would drive me to distraction.

I find the adaptive cruise control irritating too – though this is something that annoys me in almost everything I drive. When approaching slower-moving traffic, you have to move out what feels like far too early to avoid the car automatically applying the brakes. I've also had a few experiences where the radar appears to have become confused by the clouds of spray that lorries throw up in inclement weather, trying to stop me hitting what the system seems to misidentify as a solid object. Not good.

But in fairness, they're pretty much the only things that irk me about this car in day-to-day use. The driving position is comfortable enough, the seats are superb and little details like the thin steering wheel and relatively small screen make long journeys fly by – all while achieving close to 50mpg.

Impressing passengers

I will admit that it's actually proving quite hard to think of things to write about my HR-V. Not because it's a poor car, by any means. In fact, it's the opposite. It takes everything I throw at it happily in its stride.

I've racked up fewer miles than usual this month, but with just as much gear on board as it would normally have. In fact, on account of me needing to shed some more light on my photographic subjects now that the days are becoming ever shorter, it has been happily carting around a 4ft-long light stick, which is too wide for the boot but happy to cover the rear footwell from end to end-not something every car can handle.

A trip to Aberystwyth to support a friend's ultimate Frisbee team (yes, it's a real sport, I promise) proved its prowess once again. Although its boot is unable to take the aforementioned light stick (I've encountered very few boots that can, the Skoda Superb Estate we ran last summer being the last), it is more than capable of stowing five people's massive sports bags for a weekend of chasing a flying plastic disc around a leisure centre.

My passengers were extremely complimentary about the HR-V, and indeed I've yet to find anyone with a bad word to say about it. Despite the fairly small dimensions, the cabin is nice both front and back, capable of sitting three adults side by side about as comfortably as can be expected.

As I swoop around town, palming the light steering wheel while traversing narrow streets and diving into tight parallel parking bays, I wonder why on earth you would need to buy a bigger car.

And the rear leg room really is impressive. Two of my friends are as lanky as they come and often end up squashed in the back of test cars, but both want me to keep this HR-V forever on account of them being able to properly stretch out. Honestly, it's like a cut-price S-Class back there – an impression also given by the build quality.

The switchgear really is to be applauded. Honda certainly isn't known for poor details or shoddy workmanship, but here its quality has been taken to a new level. The temperature control knobs and switches are well finished and perfectly weighted, to the point that I sometimes find myself changing the cabin temperature just to use them.

It's not all sunshine and roses, mind you. Although the HR-V is perfectly happy on the road (it rides superbly, is very well isolated inside and has some lovely seats), there's not much to say when it comes to driving dynamics. It's possible to press on along country roads (the car's relative narrowness helps here), but you would be incredibly hard-pressed to get any enjoyment out of doing so.

The car goes where you point it, but you get absolutely no sense of what it or the road is doing. Body roll is well contained, but you get very little sense of speed. Also not helping is the stepless transmission (called e-CVT but not really a CVT), even if it does deliver that hybrid power smoothly.

Obviously not everything has to be as engaging to drive as a flyweight mid-engined sports car, but after a couple of surprisingly engaging 'normal' long-termers (Suzuki Swift, I'm fondly looking back at you), I can't help wishing the HR-V could give me a little bit of feedback when I'm on the road.

Even the aforementioned Superb proved itself to be surprisingly pleasant to thread along my favourite B-road, whereas this invokes no emotion whatsoever. At least it makes my own 2004 Toyota MR2 that little bit more satisfying to drive…

Unremarkable - in a good way

Some cars are so compelling that you just can't stop waxing lyrical about them, seemingly being tailored to your personal use case like a Savile Row suit, while the fundamentally flawed cars of the world bother you enough to ensure you're never short of writing inspiration.

The HR-V sits between those two extremes, being remarkable only for how entirely unremarkable it is. While such a car won't do anything for the ardent driving enthusiast, it's an undeniable fact that grey sells. And the HR-V is excellent at being grey - in more ways than its pearlescent paint. It does everything that the average customer could expect of it with no foibles, no irritations, no issues.

As a serial sports car owner, I admittedly feel apathetic towards the HR-V, because driving thrills are alien to it. The steering wheel just does what it says on the tin. The chassis handles well and is capable of being pushed down a B-road at a healthy lick.

Yet I'm also acutely aware that it's comfortable, smooth, economical, well built, practical and entirely reliable - in stark contrast to some of my previous purchases. There is one thing that makes the mask slip, though, and it concerns a subject we have written about time and time again: the advanced driver assistance systems, or ADAS.

Honda is, of course, required by European law (specifically the General Safety Regulations 2) to fit various ADAS in its latest cars, but it has implemented them poorly. They feel like afterthoughts. This is true of many manufacturers' ADAS efforts, it must be said, but that isn't much of an excuse.

I've probably had more journeys during which the HR-V's adaptive cruise control system has freaked out like a timid horse at a parked car, a shadow or seemingly nothing at all than I have where it has worked successfully - all while the speed-limit reader picks up an entirely incorrect limit and assaults me with noisy bongs for daring to go above what it sees as a 40mph limit on a national-limit motorway.

This tech is a pain to turn off too, requiring navigation through sub-menus while the car is in park. At least I'm now so used to its protests that my ears have learned to tune them out.

Goodbye

Nearly 12,000 miles after this surprisingly good-looking SUV was dropped off, the people from Honda have returned to reclaim it.

So what have we learned in the intervening time? Well, first and foremost, it seems that I'm not the only one whose head has been turned by this oddly handsome machine. A number of people have commented-in a good way on the Honda's stylish design, which is just sharp enough to stand out from the largely generic SUVs that populate our roads these days.

From its tidy diamond-cut alloy wheels to the grille that's chunky enough to stand out without being offensive and the double-stack rear light bar that looks like something akin to the sticker font used on a Vauxhall Chevette HSR, the HR-V is an eye-catching thing.

That said, while I love the hidden rear door handle that's neatly incorporated in the Hofmeister kink, passengers are less keen - I have lost count of the number of times someone has stared in puzzlement at the side of the car as they try to work out how to get in. Maybe it's a little too hidden, eh?

When you do finally open a door, you're presented with an airy interior that's a great example of function meeting form. You can really sink into those big and comfy chairs up front, with all the controls in perfect reaching distance for the driver. The dashboard is a rare exception to the perceived rule that everything simply must live on a touchscreen these days - in particular I love the knobs for the HVAC controls, which are tactile and easy to use.

It's a notably spacious cabin, too. The rear accommodation in particular is worth mentioning, with a broad bench that offers a copious amount of leg room. Going five-up in most cars - especially when you've ended up with a group of friends all upwards of 6ft tall - can be a squeeze, but I can't think of anything with such a relatively small footprint that has impressed me as much as this.

Storage is worth mentioning as well: the boot is huge, being deep and wide with no odd lumps or protrusions to eat into luggage or load space. The rear seats fold fully flat, too, and that, combined with a softly sprung ride, makes it a great space from which to capture the car-to-car tracking photos you see in Autocar.

Staying in the rear cabin, Honda's 'Magic' seats really are as their name suggests, folding upwards to allow you to load large objects such as antique chess tables or rare Bride bucket seats (yes, this really happened) into the rear footwell, in effect turning the space into a second boot. Handy.

How does the Honda drive? Well, it drives and there isn't too much more to say on that front. Urban driving seems to be its strong suit, with the HR-V often kicking into its EV mode around town and giving rapid yet quiet acceleration as a result.

The light steering is great for whirling around street corners and dodging city potholes, and it has a decent amount of steering angle that makes parallel parking predictable and easy. The low-speed ride is decent enough but not outstanding: it soaks up lumps and bumps reasonably well but struggles with the larger ones that are all too common these days.

It's a decent motorway cruiser, too. The ride is great at higher speeds, and the cabin is refined, with wind and road noise kept to a minimum in a way that rivals struggle to match - until you get to a hill. The HR-V has a fairly piddly power output of 129bhp, which is converted into forward motion by an e-CVT that soon makes unhappy noises once inclines begin to steepen.

I'd liken the sound to driving a range-extender, but frankly it's much louder and much, much more annoying. With such a relatively low amount of horsepower, you end up stressing the engine substantially at speed, and as a result attempting to climb hills at motorway speeds will soon have your passengers worrying the car is about to blow up. At least the sound system is good enough that you can simply drown out the noise.

Head onto a twisty road, though, and you'll be nothing if not disappointed. The steering, so light and pleasant in town, quickly becomes an irritant, providing absolutely zero feedback or feel. Not to say that it's useless - the HR-V very much goes where you point it - but you'll derive absolutely no pleasure from threading it down even the most brilliant road.

It's not a car for enthusiasts, then, but it's hard to imagine typical buyers having much to complain about - especially so given that not a single thing went wrong throughout our stewardship.

Honda HR-V 1.5 iMMD E:HEV Advance Style Plus

Prices: List price new £39,535 List price now £37,825 Price as tested £43,085

Options: Obscura Black Pack £1750, Urban Grey Pearl Paint £700, Illumination Pack £565, dog guard £360, floor mats £175

Economy and range: Claimed economy 52.3mpg Fuel tank 40 litres Test average 45.7mpg Test best 48.9mpg Test worst 42.8mpg Real-world range 402 miles

Tech Highlights: 0-62mph 10.7sec Top speed 106mph Engine 4 cyls in line, 1498cc, petrol, plus electric motor Max power 129bhp at 6000-6400rpm Max torque 187lb ft at 4500-5000rpm Gearbox e-CVT Boot 319 litres Wheels 7.5Jx18in, alloy Tyres 225/50 R18, Michelin e-Primacy Kerb weight 1401kg

Service and running costs: Contract hire rate £566 pcm CO₂ 122g/km Service costs None Other costs None Fuel costs £1556 Running costs including fuel £1556 Cost per mile 13 pence Faults None

Radical Hyundai saloon and SUV preview bespoke China EVs

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 08:26:19 +0100

Venus and Earth concepts preview new electric cars bespoke to the world's biggest car market

Hyundai has revealed the radical Venus and Earth concepts as a showcase of its plans for a new range of bespoke electric cars for the Chinese market.

The rakish Venus saloon and rugged Earth SUV preview a new China-specific EV line-up that is "tailored to local customers", Hyundai said - and distinct from the Ioniq EVs the Korean company sells in other global markets.

To emphasise this distinction, Hyundai's EV models in China will be named after planets – like the two concepts – rather than taking numerical designations according to their size, like the Ioniq 3, 5, 6 and 9.

This new naming strategy, Hyundai said, "symbolises how each vehicle orbits around the customer - the central focus of this new Ioniq universe".

The show cars also preview a dramatic new design language for Hyundai in China, departing from the monolithic, retro and pixel-heavy motifs of its existing Ioniq models.

Defined by their simple 'single-curve' silhouettes, the Venus and Earth are said to be "instantly recognisable and emotionally distinctive".

The Venus, for example, is wholly distinct from the similarly sized and positioned Ioniq 6 that Hyundai launched in 2022. Finished in a "radiant gold" that references the colour of its namesake planet, it has an unusual cab-forward profile with a "lightweight, frame-structured roof" and a transparent spoiler - and is much sharper and straighter-edged than the curvy electric saloon that Hyundai sells in the UK.

It's a complete departure inside the "driver-focused, wrap-around cockpit", too, where physical switchgear is entirely absent in favour of a huge digital display that spans almost the width of the car - hinting at the advanced digital functionality of Hyundai's upcoming Chinese cars. Suede upholstery and gold trim elements emphasise the "premium feel", Hyundai said.

The Earth meanwhile takes a more rugged approach, with chunky body cladding, skid plates and swollen bodywork hinting at its outdoorsy aspirations - a growing trend in China, where Defender-style family SUVs are incredibly popular.

The Earth's cabin is designed more obviously with space and comfort in mind, featuring 'air-hug' seats made up of several air-filled pockets, dynamic mood lighting and a number of 'shy-tech' elements designed to promote a "calm and breathable" ambience.

Simon Loasby, Hyundai's head designer, said the concepts are a stake in the ground for the company's ambition to increase its market footprint in China with a completely new business strategy.

“We chose to be 'the origin', something entirely new – recognisable at a glance from a distance, with a powerful presence on the road, and delivering what we call a ‘best in first impression’," he said.

"'The origin’ is our declaration: ‘lead, don’t follow’. It is the point from which our movement begins. Our ambition is to set a new direction.”

Hyundai has given no indication of the concepts' readiness for production, nor said when it plans to launch its new bespoke Chinese EVs - but it will provide further details when the cars make thei public debut at the Beijing motor show later this month.

Nor has it confirmed whether the models will use the E-GMP platform that underpins the existing Ioniq EVs - although its confirmation that these new cars will feature "market-specific solutions" such as range-extender powertrains and autonomous driving technologies suggests a high level of bespoke engineering.

Hyundai has a joint venture in China already with Beijing-based BAIC Motor, through which it produces the Elexio SUV, Custo MPV, Mufasa crossover and various adapted global models for China.

Hyundai is one of several global car manufacturers targeting growth in China with a line of bespoke models tailored to meet the unique demands and regulations of the world's biggest automotive market.

Volkswagen, for example, has an "in China, for China" strategy and has developed an extensive range of local-market EVs and ICE models in partnership with several local manufacturers, while sibling brand Audi recently launched AUDI as a China-specific premium EV marque.

Ford slashes Capri and Explorer prices by £5000

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0100

Electric SUV siblings now start from around £35,000 – but lowered prices cause worry in used car market

Ford has cut the price of the Explorer and Capri electric SUVs by around £5000 just a week after improving standard equipment levels and extending their ranges.

However, industry insiders have told Autocar that they're worried the move could have a knock-on impact on used car values, not just for Ford EVs but across the market.

The price of the Explorer has dropped by between £4035 and £4800, depending on spec, bringing the starting price down to £35,185 for the rear-driven 58kWh Style model.

The range-topping, four-wheel-drive, 77kWh Explorer Premium now costs less than £50,000. Before April it was nearly £54,000.

The price of the Capri has dropped by between £4080 and £5070, with the base 58kWh Style model now starting at £36,985.

In addition to the price cut, Ford has increased the equipment level and upgraded the battery of Standard Range cars to give them an additional 43 miles of range.

The extra kit includes an updated Sync infotainment system, uprated adaptive cruise control, a reversing assistant, a driver monitoring system and a three-pin outlet to power devices at up to 2.3kW.

Ford said the price cuts and upgrades were in response to the “highly competitive EV market”. Indeed, rivals including Tesla, Abarth and Vauxhall have made similar cuts in response to increased competition from cheaper rivals, notably those from Chinese brands.

The worry is that the price cuts could have a similar impact to Tesla’s slashing of Model 3 prices two years ago: a decrease in values of almost all used EVs. Since then there has been widespread uncertainty around used EV values.

A senior remarketing industry source told Autocar that Explorer values at the one-year-old, 10,000-mile point had already dropped by nearly 9% since December 2025, even before the latest new-car price cuts.

He added: “This could have a heavy impact on the market, because it sends out a shockwave through the leasing sector. It causes buyer caution, because they don’t know if there will be another cut, and that continues into used car values. People think [Ford] may do it again.

“This drop will hit monthly rentals through worsening residual values, and when trade buyers see this, they won’t bid as much: they will bid under book value. That will take time to level out.”

Diablo, TT, R34, M5... Driving the best cars of the 1990s

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:13:19 +0100

It's a star-studded showdown of modern classics as we revisit the era's stand-out cars

Everyone loves 1990s cars. Over the past decade their popularity has risen rapidly as the differences between them and contemporary models have become ever more distinct.

What’s the reason? After all, 1990s cars are now 25 to 35 years out of date. And there isn’t the same love out there for the cars of the 1980s or 2000s.

It’s tempting to blame simple nostalgia: teenage kids of the mid-1990s are approaching 50 today. Back then they desired the cars of their era; today they can do something about it.

We believe there’s much more to it than that, though. Today, the cars of the 1990s are admired by a far wider cohort of enthusiasts than those teenagers of the time. There’s a unique purity and originality baked into the best of them that speaks especially of the 1990s.

What was so special about the era? Sociologists say our lives were simpler. The world economy boomed, the internet was in its infancy and there were no smartphones. Computers were boxy beige appliances people used only at work. One pithy 10-word summary of the 1990s speaks of ‘better music, better movies, better people, better cars, better economy’.

For car companies life was simpler, too. Climate change wasn’t yet an issue. Government regulation of car design was a factor, but shapes and structures were limited far less than today.

Dieselgate was two decades away. No one saw a need for today’s vast investment in electric cars and battery tech, but car companies’ economics were already greatly assisted by platform theory: distinct models built off similar underpinnings. Car companies were far more free to concentrate on creating cars people could love – and they did.

This realisation, this rising interest in the 1990s, is what encouraged us recently to gather 10 of the best and most disparate 1990s cars we could find at a favourite location in Gloucestershire.

The mission was to drive and understand the rationale behind them all over again, to enjoy them and to discover, above all, whether all the love was misplaced. Here’s how it went, alphabetically speaking.

Audi TT

The Audi TT, launched late in 1998, is one of the most successful ‘platform’ models yet created. Not many who viewed it as a cheaper Porsche Boxster alternative would have known, without being told, that this individualistic and timeless 2+2 coupé, revealed as a concept in 1995, was really a Volkswagen Golf.

When we finally got our hands on a 225bhp 1.8-litre turbo version in December 1998, we were enthusiastic about its strong performance, entertaining handling and terrific cabin.

The TT lived a long life: the last of three generations was built in November 2023. But the original TT styling that emanated in VW’s California studios makes a particular case for ’90s cars. It is by far the most distinctive of the three TTs and destined always to be the collectors’ favourite.

Matt Prior instantly liked the TT, calling it “a proper concept car made real”. Illya Verpraet was also surprised. “It’s not a sports car,” he wrote, “but it’s very pleasant and rounded to drive.

"The driving position is good, the gearchange is positive, the engine is strong and smooth and there’s plenty of usable grip. It’s a design icon you can use like a normal car.” Not bad going for a 27-year-old (the car, not Verpraet…).

BMW 5 Series

BMW’s E39 528i is a fine example of the purity of the Munich company’s styling, before the complications set in. The meaty straight six engine, the driver-focused driving position and the unmatched clarity of the two dominant instruments say ‘ultimate driving machine’ as effectively as the words themselves.

There’s a lowness and a purity of line that speak unmistakably of a time when the revered Wolfgang Reitzle was still running the show and producing a generation of BMWs that is still much admired.

This was the pre-Bangle era, when the design chief and management felt compelled to find a new styling direction. Launched in 1995, the E39 looks small today, roughly the size of today’s 3 Series, but there’s an authority to its shape that still identifies it as the mid-range executive model.

“Even now,” writes James Disdale, “the 5 Series stands up to the scrutiny of modern eyes, ears and hands. The interior is spacious, the dashboard is an ergonomic masterclass and the driving position is without fault.”

Then there’s that creamy-smooth 2.8-litre straight six that generates more than enough energy to easily keep pace with today’s traffic. It’s only the slightly ponderous shift time of the otherwise slick five-speed auto that ages the car.

The steering is naturally geared and weighted, the natural rear-drive balance can be exploited at sensible speeds and it’s refined enough to shame many moderns.

Ford Mondeo

By contrast, the Ford Mondeo 1.8 LX mostly set out to impress fleet managers. This was the Blue Oval at the height of its powers, and during a period when two-thirds of Britain’s new cars were bought by businesses.

But with the help of legendary chief engineer Richard Parry-Jones, Ford had moved on a long way from the crummy Cortina days.

When the Mondeo hit the market in 1993 it was praised by Autocar in a mighty 14-page launch test entitled ‘Mondeo is king’ and which was alleged to have boosted Ford’s New York share price. We followed that up a couple of months later by driving a 1.8 LX 12,000 miles around Europe in a week.

Verpraet reckons the Mondeo aces Parry-Jones’s famous 20-metre test, because the driving position is great and the controls are easy and intuitive – both things you notice before you’re out of first gear. “It can’t help feeling old because of the shape, colour, materials, low waistline and vast glass area,” he added, “but you can row it along in ordinary traffic and feel very satisfied.”

Prior is a bit worried for the Mondeo, though. “It’s showing little sign of moving from the old banger phase and into its classic time,” he said. “I’m not even sure the Sierra, its predecessor,has managed to do that yet.”

Lamborghini Diablo SV

Hard to find a greater contrast to a Mondeo than a Lamborghini Diablo SV, launched in the mid-1990s as a higher-powered (but ironically slightly cheaper) version of the standard 1990 Diablo, born as the Countach replacement.

Yet, like the Mondeo, it typifies the 1990s in several ways: it was completed under Chrysler ownership of the company, which came about at a time when big corporations were becoming interested in bespoke sports car manufacturers (Toyota, then General Motors, at Lotus; Ford at Aston Martin).

Its design, originally penned by Marcello Gandini in his sharp-edged style, was ‘softened’ by Chrysler’s people, a move which today indisputably ages the car.

The car you see here was our original road test machine, and it definitely speaks of another era. The scissor-opening doors make ingress and egress very hard, the driving position isn’t brilliant and reversing the Lambo is a guessing game because rear vision is so poor.

Yet when you drive it today there’s a magnificent exuberance about the engine’s thrust and sound – and the all-mechanical gated gearchange – which takes you right away from the curbs and limitations of today. Once you learn its quirks, the car drives very well.

Steering is heavy, but grip is still impressive. And because the weight is lower than many today – at 1570kg – the SV doesn’t even feel excessively large or heavy, although it did at the time.

Lotus Elise

‘Dated’ really isn’t a description you should apply to the Lotus Elise, a car many agree always looked best in its original form. In fact, it looks modern and well-proportioned enough to be made today.

The Elise also embodies some of the most important values of 2025 affordable car design: chassis rigidity, light weight and a corrosion-free bonded structure, in this case made from extruded aluminium.

The Elise appeared soon after Lotus’s unsuccessful dalliance with a front-wheel-drive Elan, and it took the company right back to the Chapman era of compact, rear-drive simplicity. The Elise was conceived in the early 1990s and launched in 1995, and at the time we reckoned it “really is the new Seven”.

About that we were half right: it was more civilised and somewhat heavier than a Seven, but like the Caterhams it utilised brilliantly components that were common and cheaply available.

For yours truly, the original Elise is a reminder of why I’ve owned two of them – and why I sold them. They were quick for the power, agile and terrific fun to drive, and quite reliable for a marque not known for it.

But entry is problematic and the hoods are terrible. Still, once you’re installed, they always feel special: they remind you why power steering, for the purest cars, simply isn’t needed.

Mercedes A-Class

If cars such as the original Audi TT and Lotus Elise are lasting icons, the Mercedes-Benz A-Class will always be a curiosity: a novel car whose launch was interrupted by its highly publicised failure of the elk test, an extreme examination in swervability invented by Car of the Year jurors in Scandinavia.

Hatched during an era when premium manufacturers were finding new ways to steal sales from mainstreamers like Ford and Renault, the A-Class is shorter than a Ford Fiesta and very boxy. Disdale was pretty enthusiastic about our A140 Elegance.

“Take a spin in the A140 and you’ll wonder why it didn’t spark a revolution,” he said. “It sold in decent numbers, but few other manufacturers were willing to follow Mercedes’ bold, engineering-led approach.

No doubt the A-Class cost a fortune to develop, but the result is a car that packs a remarkable amount of space into a compact footprint, and its clever sandwich-section floor was designed to swallow the engine in a frontal impact.

“There’s SUV-like elevation to the driving position that combines brilliantly with excellent visibility, while on the move the A-Class feels far more agile and secure than that infamous elk test would have you believe.”

MGF

While Lotus was at work on the Elise, Rover Group, which had spent the 1980s using its MG badges to distinguish assorted, not-very-good Rover saloons, decided to use its new K-series engine, plus various Metro suspension parts, in a new mid-engined roadster called the MGF, an answer to the many calls for another two-seater after MGB production ended in 1980.

The F hit the market just as BMW acquired Rover, but when BMW departed five years later it became part of a management buyout (by the infamous Phoenix Four) that formed MG Rover.

It was a decent little car whose styling was the work of Gerry McGovern, JLR’s design chief today, and it sold well for a while even against the Mazda MX-5. But indifferent build quality and corporate uncertainties weighed against it.

Still, even today it’s a well-founded, practical and good-looking little car, available at bargain prices. Matt Saunders rated the F as “not quite as entertaining to its core as a Mazda MX-5”, but praised it for its responsiveness, agility and pliant, Hydragas ride.

“It’s a carefree sports car you wouldn’t feel obliged to drive the wheels off and could enjoy at any speed,” he added.

Nissan Skyline

For a bewildering array of generations, models and specifications, look no further than Nissan’s array of Skylines, a breed that began in the 1960s at Prince Motors before that defunct marque was acquired by Nissan.

Happily for UK buyers in the 1990s, the key car was the Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R, a byword for expensive, high-tech Japanese performance, what with its four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering and meaty 276bhp 2.6-litre straight six, fed via two turbochargers.

Skylines were rare and very often augmented with wheel and bodywork mods and huge power increases; they were such a means to a performance end that standard cars like the example we have here are now extremely rare.

“Years ago it was impossible to drive a Skyline GT-R without it bearing an enormous weight of cultish hype,” said Saunders. “Today, though, you can just let this car’s driving experience wash over you. Or rather swallow you whole, after you’ve let the boost build fully.

I was surprised how compact, lightweight, tactile and old-school analogue this car felt. Still quick, too, even by modern standards, and it still has that competition-firm body control and natural rear-wheel-drive cornering poise. I loved it.”

Toyota RAV4

Given all the 1990s action above, it’s probably no surprise that this fruitful era can also claim to have hatched the now universally desired compact SUV – via the launch of the Toyota RAV4.

Born as a concept in 1989, it popped up in three-door form in the UK in June 1994 and as a five-door a year later. As many SUV pretenders now do, Toyota drew bits from existing models: a Corolla platform, a Camry engine, Celica GT4 suspension and about the cutest original shape going.

Of course, it was wildly successful. Mind you, a glance at our original three-door and the latest like-the-others RAV4 of 2025 suggests – once again – that the 1990s was indeed an era of inventiveness and purity in car creation.

Saunders said: “Full disclosure: if Land Rover’s Discovery Mk1 had been available, this Toyota might not have made the cut – but I’m glad it did. I’m convinced there would have been no Freelander, Qashqai, CR-V and the rest without a RAV4 to prove the public appetite for small, cheap, higher-riding cars.

"It feels like some better-mannered Series 1 Land Rover on the road: compact, upright and quietly agile, with great visibility, cheery looks and lots of charm.”

Lotus Carlton

Big performance, not cuteness, was the major criterion for the remarkable 1990 Vauxhall Lotus Carlton, an outcome of General Motors’ seven-year control of Lotus between 1986 and 1993.

The Hethel company had been successful with the Lotus Cortina and Talbot Sunbeam Lotus, so why not a hot-shoe version of the straight-six-powered Vauxhall Carlton?

With chassis mods plus a 377bhp twin-turbo engine, the Vauxhall Lotus Carlton could run a 5.1sec 0-60mph time and reach 176mph – which made it officially the world’s fastest four-door. Autocar asked Richard Noble, then the world land speed record holder, to run a top speed, but he couldn’t beat the official mark.

“I came of age reading about the Carlton’s top speed,” writes Richard Lane. “Having driven one now, I see there’s much more to the experience. There’s a sumptuous cockpit with the kind of visibility alien to modern counterparts.

And because the ride is pliant, it’s a lovely thing just to stroke along 98% of the time. For the other 2% it’s a riot. It has a power-to-traction ratio you don’t see in modern cars. Torquey six, manual ’box and limited adhesion? It’s a super-saloon that can be steered on the throttle anywhere, any time.”

Verdict

There’s no winner here. The whole decade of 1990s car design and engineering is what earns the accolade. This sample of cars launched in the 1990s contains a wonderful array: timeless icons that were better than their replacements (Elise, TT), important trend-setters (RAV4, MGF), volume cars done at a new, higher standard (528i, Mondeo) and performance cars that progressed the genre in new ways (Diablo, Skyline, Carlton).

That leaves only the Mercedes A-Class, whose makers never saw fit to take it very far along the bold technical path on which it started out.

Which is ironic: if our view of the future tells us anything, it is that small, space-efficient car designs are what the world will surely need.

Used Jaguar F-Pace 2016-2024 review

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:04:13 +0100

Jaguar takes a typically sporting approach with the F-Pace, but it isn't quite enough to better its sibling, the Land Rover Discovery Sport A wary toe. That’s how the introductory line suggests Jaguar is entering the SUV arena, and the reasoning is sound enough: were Jaguar more confident it could sell an SUV, it would have tried it years ago.There are reasons why it hasn’t, of course. This is a company that – although written large on the radar of UK car buyers and enthusiasts – is a minnow alongside the German firms that its cars rival. Their products sell by the hundreds of thousands and contribute to sales of more than a million a year for each company. Jaguar sells fewer than 100,000 cars a year in total. Or has, until now.The F-Pace is the car that’s meant to change that. It’s a car that puts the future of Jaguar estates under threat but it’s also one that, frankly, no executive car maker can be without – even one that has a separate arm dealing entirely in executive SUVs.There’s an argument that this is one of the reasons for Jaguar’s SUV tardiness. Will a Jaguar 4x4 nick sales from a Range Rover 4x4? It’s a possibility but, as the VW Group does with Volkswagen and Audi (and Skoda and Seat too), it’s a chance you take. And seemingly those at JLR have viewed the risk in the same vein, with the smaller Jaguar E-Pace joining the range to take the fight to the BMW X1 and Audi Q3, and an electric-powered i-Pace to rival electric SUVs like Tesla's Model X.At least you get the profit either way, rather than somebody else. And the F-Pace’s ethos is wilfully different, on paper and in the drives we’ve had so far, from anything else that rolls out of a Jaguar Land Rover facility. It’s a Jaguar, which means it’s a sporting SUV, we’re told – as much as one is possible.It’s a tall car with a modicum of off-road ability, but for those who like driving. That’s always a slight contradiction, but ever since BMW launched the X5 in the late 1990s, it’s one we’ve managed to get our head around.We’ve tried most F-Pace engine variants so far in one way or another, including the F-Pace S in both petrol and diesel variants, but the one tested here counts most: the 2.0-litre diesel that will constitute the biggest number of sales.

Mercedes GLB Electric

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:00:00 +0100

Mercedes takes its seven-seat EV below £50,000 and adds 320kW charging for good measure It has to be considered the most sincere compliment to BMW’s Neue Klasse iX3 that, in the year of its introduction, arch rival Mercedes has taken the trouble to surround it with not one but two fresh competitors. Only a few weeks ago, we brought you a first drive of the new-generation Mercedes GLC Electric: the five-seat SUV that has indirectly replaced the seminal EQC. But while that car probably counts as the iX3's closer rival, there is another that bigger families should consider. And, as if to highlight how much money Mercedes continues to pour into its electrification efforts, it’s built on a different platform than the GLC and has a chromey ‘grille’ ready to dazzle in an entirely different way - with less reflective metalwork and more actual illumination, if you like that sort of thing.This is the new Mercedes GLB Electric. Replacing the EQB, it’s larger than the car it’s succeeding, stretching beyond 4.7m. As far as UK sales will be concerned (deliveries will start this summer), it's exclusively a seven-seater. And Mercedes is evidently more serious about its passenger-carrying practicality than it was with its predecessor, which was the sort of SUV you might more accurately have described as a 5+2.

New Stellantis Europe design boss vows "no clones" in effort to separate brands

Thu, 9 Apr 2026 18:16:14 +0100

Giles Vidal wants his brands to "compete more against the real competition and less between ourselves"

Stellantis is working to more clearly differentiate its brands under new European design chief Gilles Vidal so they “compete more against the real competition” rather than between themselves.

The Frenchman returned to the conglomerate in 2025 after a five-year stint with rival Renault, having overseen the production designs of the highly lauded 4, 5 and the new Twingo.

He previously made his name as the chief designer of Peugeot during the 2010s, where he introduced a new design language and was involved in the introduction of the i-Cockpit.

Now, as the dust settles on his first months back at Stellantis, he told Autocar that his aim was to “orchestrate enough differentiation between the different brands so that those brands matter”.

He continued: “The client will still compare an Opel/Vauxhall to a Peugeot to a Citroën and maybe hesitate between two Stellantis products, because Stellantis isn’t a thing for most clients.

“We can control and strategise all of this. We will make sure that we compete more against the real competition and less between ourselves, so the branding is super-important.

Vidal highlighted the previous-generation Citroën C5 Aircross, Peugeot 3008, Peugeot 5008 and Vauxhall Grandland as “an era where we did this [distinction] very well”. They were “very, very different cars not just in terms of design but in terms of driving”, he explained, yet “they were one single programme within [Stellantis precursor] PSA”.

Acknowledging that multiple models across Stellantis’s European brands – Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Citroën, DS, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel/Vauxhall and Peugeot – share platforms and therefore key structural hardpoints, he said his ambition is to deliver cars that more clearly look and feel distinct from one another, “not clones”.

"The general public doesn't care so much about Stellantis: they care about the brands themselves," he said. "You buy a Peugeot, an Opel or Vauxhall, a Fiat or whatever; you don't buy a Stellantis car. So we need to be super-sharp about what our brands stand for.

"And the brands are the biggest asset of the company from the public perspective, even if we want to optimise Stellantis as a company and about what it does."

Vidal said Peugeot will go big on “innovation”, exemplified by the recent Polygon concept and its Hypersquare steer-by-wire system. “Maybe we could push it even further,” he continued, “as powerful and strong ideas like that could be very interesting.” Its exterior designs, however, will remain broadly in line with those of today: “The result as a finished product can stay an elegant piece of design and not just a futuristic, crazy design.”

Citroën “is a completely different story,” Vidal said, explaining that it will push hard to become an “affordable brand” but without neglecting its historical “weirdness”. Characteristics such as modularity and spacious, airy cabins will become crucial as the brand looks to deliver on “experience”, with “inventive” solutions such as the ELO concept, a micro-MPV.

DS will continue with “French premium”, he said, while Fiat will carry on the path set by the Grande Panda with a “family” of models. Vidal wants to make Opel the “most creative German brand”, with its UK-market twin Vauxhall sporting “super-German designs”.

Alfa Romeo meanwhile will major in producing driver’s cars, with physical switchgear and tactility key to fostering a sense of connection to the machine. “The 33 Stradale [supercar] is a crazy example, obviously a bit expensive, but the point is that’s what you want to experience in the affordable Alfa Romeos,” said Vidal. “That’s the kind of feel you want when you're in a Junior.”

Of all the brands in Stellantis’s European portfolio, Vidal highlighted Maserati as the one most evidently due reinvention. He said: “If you look at the history of Maserati, every two decades or so there was a big shift in design. You had very curvy Maseratis in the '50s and '60s, it switched completely to edgy design in the '70s and '80s, then beasts in the late '80s and '90s, then back to curvy but in a different way. Every chunk of 20 years, you can observe more or less a complete shift in design language. So what we are looking at is the next thing. The loop is now theoretically finished, so what is the next thing?"

Forget a Corsa – I bought a 355bhp Audi S8 as my first car

Thu, 9 Apr 2026 17:36:18 +0100

Teenager seeks first car and buys Audi S8: It's not the conventional way to do it, but Cameron loves his 15mpg V8

Among the many surprises Cameron Peters has up his sleeve is that although his 2002-reg Audi S8 is classed as Euro 3 for emissions purposes, it is, he tells me, exempt from London's ULEZ charge.

Generally speaking, only petrol cars certified as being Euro 4 and above (the classification was introduced in 2005) satisfy the NOx emissions standard used to determine the charge, making them exempt.

However, so long as it meets the NOx standard, a Euro 3 car is also exempt. Cameron's 23-year-old Euro 3 S8 is just such a vehicle. Transport for London's ULEZ registration checker confirms it.

Cameron, who is a year younger than his S8, bought it three years ago as his first car. He was just 19. So why did he buy a high-performance saloon and not something more practical like a run-of-the-mill Vauxhall Corsa?

"I wanted a V8," he replies, matter-of-factly. "I could have had a Corsa like everyone else my age but an S8 is more comfortable. Insurance was £1600 in the first year, which seemed reasonable, and has since fallen to £700. And, of course, it doesn't attract the ULEZ charge!"

So that's the big surprise out of the way but there are others, including the time Cameron whipped the big S8's engine and gearbox out on his driveway. "I had to rebuild the gearbox myself because to pay a garage to do it would have bankrupted me," he says.

"It weighs around 160kg and had to come out along with the engine. The fault that the five-speed Tiptronic gearbox had a failed bearing in the clutch pack is shared by most older S8s. Fortunately, parts are easily available.

"It's supposed to be a sealed-for-life gearbox filled with lifetime oil but, in reality, it's good for only around 100,000 miles. The way to avoid the problem is with 60,000-mile oil changes."

With the engine and gearbox out of the car, Cameron also took the opportunity to replace the original shocks with Bilstein items ("they've sharpened the handling") and renew the front subframe. "

The S8 is aluminium but the subframes are steel. I've since restored a replacement rear subframe and axle for the car, which I'll fit next spring," he says. Naturally, Cameron also carries out routine servicing, although, as an indication of his dedication to the car, he's careful to keep the drain holes around the body clear too.

"Given the time and effort I've invested in it so far, it's destined to be my forever car," he says. "In any case, it's a future classic and so worth preserving." Cameron's S8 Quattro is a late D2-series model with the uprated 40-valve 4.2-litre V8 producing 355bhp.

He says: "I've been to Cornwall a lot in it and also to the Alps but the most enjoyable thing is cruising around London, calmly and smoothly. Outside the city, I'll occasionally give it some beans on country roads. The steering lacks feel around the straight-ahead, though.

"It's not scary but then when you wind on more lock, it gets much better. It will pull first all the way to 40mph if you floor it, but driven like that I'm lucky to get more than 15mpg. Otherwise, it will do 30mpg on a long cruise, which suits me."

The art of the on-board: how to read a car without driving it

Thu, 9 Apr 2026 17:36:07 +0100

From wrestling a GT3 RS to sliding classics, watching the masters can be a driving masterclass

It's fair to assume that if you're reading this, you like driving. I love it.

And I'm not just talking about haring up and down a mountain road in a Porsche 911: I've enjoyed the occasional 5mph trudge around the M25, revelling in the one-two-three shifts and rev-matched downchanges. But I can also take great pleasure in not driving - more specifically in watching great drivers at work.

There was a period when it was a fixture on Porsche launches for rally legend Walter Röhrl to turn up and give passenger rides. That was sadly before my time, and I'm quite envious of anyone who got to sit next to him.

Thankfully, YouTube is a pretty good substitute, and Röhrl is hugely enjoyable to watch. He has this economy of motion to his driving style that makes it look as if he's just fetching an apfelstrudel at the bakery on a Sunday morning. Yet the speedometer and the lap times confirm he's not pootling.

Watch closely and there's always something to learn about lines or steering and gearchange technique. I feel like I become a better driver simply by osmosis.

Following Autocar's Jaguar Type 00 prototype passenger rides, there was some discussion about how much one can learn about a car by being a passenger. I'll go one further and say that there's a huge amount to be learned about a car by watching an on-board video of it being driven by a benchmark driver.

When the 992.1-generation 911 GT3 RS (the one with all the downforce) was launched a few years ago, some on-board footage surfaced of Le Mans winner and Porsche works driver Jörg Bergmeister taking it around Silverstone. In general his style seems to be more aggressive than Röhrl's, but this was something else.

If I didn't know better, I'd think he was an amateur, being very busy at the wheel and always understeering slightly, punctuated by spikes of oversteer. But we know that Bergmeister is quite the opposite. Clearly the effect of all that aero is a car that wants to be slightly over-driven; better to maximise the speed and ride out the understeer than lose speed and the associated downforce.

Meanwhile, when French motoring magazine L'Argus tests a performance car, its ace driver, Mathieu Sentis, heads to the Nürburgring. He does this on the open 'tourist days', so I dread to think of the insurance and risk assessment implications, but the resulting video is always fascinating and says more about the car than some reviews. (Not ours, obviously...)

Sentis is very much an adherent of the Röhrl academy of zen, so the cars in which his driving gets ragged really stand out. The way some let themselves be effortlessly teased into a graceful drift while others doggedly grip, the speed of the manual gearchanges and the apparent steering effort reveal so much about the cars.

Conversely, I think the joy of watching great drivers is why I've long tuned out of Formula 1. It has the best drivers in the world and the best cameras to capture them with crystal-clear imagery, so it should be the pinnacle of vicarious driving. But the cars have such quick steering and are so perfectly composed most of the time that there isn't all that much to see or appreciate.

Historic racing is the exact opposite, and all the better for it. The cars are very much not the fastest things going, because their classic-style tyres mean that they're sliding around all over the place and their recalcitrant old gearboxes require a bit of care. As a consequence, the drivers are kept very busy with fancy footwork and sawing away at the huge steering wheels. The result is magnetic to watch.

Faster, classier and 50mpg: Jaecoo 7 PHEV smashes my petrol variant

Thu, 9 Apr 2026 09:42:00 +0100

I chose the petrol version of the UK's best-selling car, but a week in the hybrid shows I made the wrong decision

Regrets, I’ve had a few… and now there’s a new one to add to the list: opting for the four-wheel-drive 1.6T petrol version of the Jaecoo 7 rather than the 1.5 SHS plug-in hybrid model.

With the Jaecoo 7 freshly declared the UK's best-selling car in March, I'm looking back at the months I spent living with a top-spec Luxury variant, during which time I covered a whopping 6000 miles and really got under the skin of this budget-friendly family SUV. But did I make a massive mistake at the very first stage?

When I got my car a few months ago, the price difference between the two (both in Luxury trim) was £2315, but that gap has narrowed and now the PHEV is just £1180 more, at £35,175. More significantly, when I did a bit of shopping around for leasing options, I discovered that some providers were offering deals comparable to the £30k entry-level 2WD Deluxe model, despite the PHEV being Jaecoo’s flagship.

That wouldn’t be quite so much of a problem if the car were no better than what I already have, but I recently got the chance to sample a PHEV for a few days and frankly now think I’ve made a mistake.

In place of a 145bhp 1598cc turbo petrol four driving all four wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, the PHEV deploys a 1499cc four-cylinder turbo four combined with an electric motor and an 18.3kWh battery, driving the front wheels via a CVT.

The PHEV’s two powerplants muster a combined 201bhp and 229lb ft of torque (to my petrol car’s 203lb ft), but the difference feels much greater. It’s still hardly a dynamic masterpiece, particularly in terms of ride and handling, but where in the petrol car you suffer frustrating start/stop delays and have to keep the engine on the boil to make meaningful progress, the PHEV’s performance feels both instant (0-62mph in 8.5sec rather than 11.8sec) and effortless.

Even if it were significantly costlier, you would soon claw that back at the pumps: where my petrol car’s on-board trip meter has been showing a paltry 30.4mpg average, the PHEV didn’t drop below 40.7mpg and was consistently nudging into the 50s (admittedly rather different to the ridiculously optimistic official figure of 403mpg).

Even better, its claimed 56-mile electric range is enough for me to get to work and back on a single charge without burning any fuel.

When it does spark up, the engine can be intrusive (when the battery depleted on the motorway at 70mph, it suddenly came to life and thrashed away at high revs until it had topped up the charge level) and stomping on the throttle delivers an alarming ‘overboost’ sensation that gives the impression of a runaway train, but on the whole it made for a far more relaxing and refined companion than my petrol car.

One major surprise about the PHEV was its interior. I had expected a few minor variations but, apart from having the same seats and basic cabin architecture, it felt very different from my petrol car, even though both profess to share the same Luxury trim level.

There were new door cards that lack the faux off-roader accents of my four-wheel-drive model, along with a whole new centre console with a split-hinged storage box and, yet more surprisingly, different switchgear, with even the gear selector moved from the centre console to the steering column.

Jaecoo told me the differences are because buyers of electrified cars favour “a more futuristic look”, and the PHEV is certainly classier and more premium in its soft-touch feel.

The only real downsides I could find were a slightly smaller boot (412 litres compared with 500 litres) and a tendency to overwhelm the front wheels too easily if you’re not gentle with the throttle pedal, exacerbated in the rain or the snow. I was reminded of that in the recent cold snap, when my four-wheel-drive petrol car handled snow- and ice-covered roads with significantly more aplomb, aided by the multitude of drive modes that it features to back up its off-roader credentials (the PHEV has just three: Normal, the default Eco and Sport).

Small mercies, I guess.

Kia confirms electric city car for 2027, new family SUV for 2029

Thu, 9 Apr 2026 08:52:52 +0100

Lower-riding sibling to EV2 could take 'EV1' badge and be electric Picanto replacement

Two crucial new volume models inbound as Kia aims to ramp up EV sales in challenging market

Kia will launch a new small electric hatchback in Europe next year as part of a strategy to dramatically boost its EV sales mix in the region by the end of the decade.

The new model, which is described as a ‘B-hatch’, is expected to be a similarly sized but lower-riding sibling to the upright Kia EV2, and serve as a rival to the likes of the Renault 5, Peugeot e-208 and Vauxhall Corsa Electric.

Kia says the new Europe-focused model – which could be positioned as an EV alternative to the Picanto and take the EV1 badge – will be the first ‘software-defined vehicle’ in this segment, referring to its strategy of centrally integrating all of the car’s core systems into one unit.

It will use the same 400V E-GMP platform as the EV2 and is expected to share the taller car’s 42.2kWh and 61kWh batteries. That would give a range that’s likely to span from 200 miles in the cheapest variants up towards 300 in the Long Range car.

Kia has given no concrete details of the hatchback, but it will be the firm’s cheapest electric car, with prices likely to start in the low-£20,000s to line it up against its Renault and Stellantis rivals.

There’s no word yet on where it could be built, but the company’s push to produce cars in the regions where they are sold means the EV2 factory in Slovakia is a likely candidate.

The ‘EV1’ will be one of 14 electric vehicles Kia plans to offer across all segments globally by 2030, up from 11 today. That total is made up of two ‘passenger models’, nine SUVs and three ‘purpose-built vehicles’ (commercial vehicles).

One of the new SUVs will be a ‘flagship volume EV model’ launching in 2029, which, Kia says, will build “on its SUV heritage to drive trade-up demand from Sportage HEV and PHEV, as well as high-trim EV5 customers”.

The new additions form part of a strategy to grow EV sales to one million units per year by 2030 for a market share of 3.8%, up from 250,000 and 1.7% in 2025. That goal is around 20% lower than it was in Kia’s earlier plans, in recognition that EV uptake is progressing at different speeds in different global regions, and combustion-based drivetrains still have a significant role to play in the coming years.

Speaking at Kia’s annual investor day conference in Seoul earlier today (9 April), Kia CEO Ho Sung Song said the global electric vehicle market “is now entering the ‘chasm’ phase”, with growth slowing following an initial spike in demand during the early phases of the EV rollout.

"To date, the EV market has been driven mainly by early adopters of new technology,” he said. “However, as growth has slowed relative to initial expectations, global EV penetration reached approximately 16% last year.”

Song said that to overcome this ‘chasm’ and drive EV uptake, “the focus must be on improving affordability and expanding charging infrastructure in ways that deliver tangible value to a wider customer base".

Affordable models like the EV1 and high-volume mainstream contenders including the electric SUV in 2029 will play a significant role in this context, but Kia said it is also crucial that it “strengthens EV competitiveness by improving the overall product quality of our EV offerings”.

To that end, the company will introduce a new platform in the coming years to replace the E-GMP architecture that underpins all of its current EVs.

This new structure is said to bring a 40% increase in battery capacities, offer a 9% boost in motor output and be capable of offering ‘level-two-plus-plus’ self-driving functionality, whereby the vehicle can effectively drive itself with no human input, though the driver must remain focused at all times.

The new platform will also accommodate what Kia calls ‘fifth-generation’ batteries – with 15% greater energy density and 30% cheaper chemistry – and contain an advanced new software structure that underpins a new infotainment system.

It has not yet confirmed which models will be the first to use the new platform, but the Sportage-sized SUV coming towards the end of the decade is a likely candidate.

While Kia invests in expanding and developing its EV line-up over the coming years, however, it remains committed to its global combustion powertrain offering and will “continue to expand our ICE and hybrid line-ups strategically, aligning with the pace of electrification in each market”.

That is particularly relevant in the US and certain emerging markets, where EV uptake remains heavily constrained, but Kia still plans for electric vehicles to account for two thirds of all of its sales in Europe by the end of the decade.

Song said that while “demand in the Western European market is expected to remain constrained through 2030”, largely because of the easing of CO2 regulations in the region, EVs are still forecasted to account for 43% of the local market by 2030, and Kia plans to far outpace that market average with a 66% EV sales mix - “underscoring our commitment to lead the European EV market”.

New 2026 Cupra Raval unveiled as £23k Renault 5 fighter

Thu, 9 Apr 2026 08:30:00 +0100

New electric supermini will be offered in several configurations, including 222bhp 'VZ' hot hatch

The Cupra Raval has been unveiled as the first in a new wave of small Volkswagen Group EVs that will take the fight to the Renault 5 when it arrives in the UK this summer, priced from less than £23,000.

The low cost is made possible by its MEB Plus underpinnings, which it will share with its upcoming Volkswagen ID Cross, ID Polo and Skoda Epiq siblings.

MEB Plus is a development of the structure already used by cars such as the larger Cupra Born, but reworked to reduce costs. Changes include swapping from multi-link rear suspension to a simpler torsion beam.

The Raval is 4.05m long, 1.78m wide and 1.52m tall, which makes it slightly larger than the Renault 5. It is positioned as the sportiest of the Volkswagen Group's incoming small EVs and its suspension is 15mm lower and 10mm wider than the basic configuration of MEB Plus as a result.

Despite its compact dimensions, it has a large boot, measuring 430 litres – bigger than that offered in the bigger Born. That is thanks to a large underfloor compartment similar to the Gigabox in the Ford Puma Gen-E.

New Cupra Raval: Specs

In a bid to give the Raval line-up broad appeal, Cupra will offer it with four trims, four powertrains and two battery packs.

These choices also give an indication of what to expect from its Volkswagen and Skoda siblings, which are due to be revealed in the coming months.

Entry-level Core cars pair a 114bhp front motor with a 37kWh lithium-iron-phosphate battery for a claimed range of around 185 miles. It can be charged at up to 90kW for a 10-80% refill in 27min.

The V1 and V2 trims offer 133bhp as standard, with the option to raise that to 208bhp.

A 52kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt battery can also be chosen, which boosts the claimed range to around 280 miles. The maximum charging rate with the 52kWh pack rises to 130kW.

At the top of the line-up sits the Raval VZ (for 'Veloz, Spanish for fast), which will be Cupra's rival to the Alpine A290, priced at around £37,000.

The VZ is fitted with the 52kWh pack and raises the motor's output to 222bhp, which is delivered to the front wheels through an electronic limited-slip differential. That nets a 0-62mph time of 7.0sec and a top speed of 108mph. With the extra power comes a reduced range, from around 280 miles to nearer 250 miles.

Because of its sportier remit, the VZ also gets a different front suspension design with reworked knuckles, giving a larger negative camber angle and allowing it to handle higher lateral g-forces. This is paired with the Volkswagen Group's Dynamic Chassis Control (DCC) Sport adaptive dampers. The stability control system in the VZ can also be turned completely off, enabling greater adjustability.

Design appeal

The exterior design of the Raval remains faithful to the 2022 Urban Rebel concept, with a prominent 'sharknose' and a sloping roofline. Key changes compared with the show car include new vents in the front grille, which are backlit to highlight the Raval's beak.

Cupra said it has paid particular attention to the on-board experience. For example, projectors are mounted inside the dashboard to shine animations onto the front door cards. Drivers can choose from various graphics, and they can be tied to the chosen drive mode.

"We use light almost like a material," Cupra creative director Francesca Sangalli told Autocar. "Light gives more involvement – a more immersive experience for the customer. It has a strong power to make you feel very connected to the environment."

The Raval also gets the largest instrument display of any Cupra yet, at 10.25in.

Whereas the incoming ID Polo has a new infotainment display and physical climate controls, the Raval retains the older, 12.9in infotainment screen used in the Born and the much criticised air-con temperature sliders and haptic controls. However, its new steering wheel is laden with traditional buttons.

The VZ is marked out inside with Cupra's signature Cup bucket seats upholstered in a new '3D Knit' – a complex yet lightweight weave of fabric similar to that on running trainers. This material is said to be more sustainable than conventional alternatives because it can be manufactured as a single piece so, when being recycled, there are no stitches to unpick as there would be on a traditional seat cover made from multiple pieces. It will later feature in the top-rung Tribe Editions of other models.

The Raval will be Cupra's smallest and most affordable car and is seen as key to the brand's expansion plans. Insiders hope that it will become the firm's best-selling model by 2028, outstripping the Formentor, of which 104,400 were sold globally last year.

BYD confirms UK's fastest EV chargers: 1500kW network detailed

Thu, 9 Apr 2026 07:39:33 +0100

New system will be open to all brands and is capable of five-minute charge times

BYD will install 300 1500kW chargers in the UK under new 'Flash' branding over the next 12 months.

The new stations, which will consist of at least 600 chargers in total, will be by far the fastest in the UK.

There will be 6000 new locations globally. The system is being spearheaded by the new Denza Z9 GT and can charge its 123kWh battery from 10% to 70% in five minutes.

Early adopters of the Z9 GT in the UK will receive 18 months' worth of free charging at the stations. BYD is calling this the Flash Pass.

The locations will not be purely BYD-owned. The Chinese company is in talks with partners to install new devices at sites where chargers are already located.

Diego Pareschi, director of EV charging at BYD, said: “We are coming into a mature market. It doesn’t make sense to create your own. People want a seamless experience and with this they will get that.”

When asked about the branding, he said: “Flash charging is more important than branding. We want it to be like USB – its own thing.”

The chargers will be open to every car manufacturer and will use the universal CCS2 charging infrastructure. They will be branded Denza at Denza dealers but will be called Flash everywhere else. Final details of the chargers have yet to be finalised, but Pareschi said high-traffic locations will be prioritised. BYD says its chargers are not a drain on the National Grid: the devices can be powered by on-site battery packs topped up by solar panels.

The ultra-fast charging creates an interesting conundrum for BYD, because the company doesn’t want to hold up its customers with other people charging at lower rates. Pareschi said: “We are still figuring out a way to disincentivise people charging at 50kW. This will be market-dependent, but we might put time caps with penalties.”

In July 2025, BYD announced it would bring 1000kW charging to the UK, but it has decided to expand this rollout because of changing market conditions and the fact that it could.

The Z9 GT from BYD-owned brand Denza will start at around £100,000 in the UK, Deliveries are expected to start in the autumn once dealers have been selected, which is likely to be in June or July.

Nissan Micra

Thu, 9 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Has Nissan rekindled the ’90s magic for its sixth-generation supermini? The diminutive Nissan Micra is a car whose significance is easy to overlook in the late 20th- and early 21st-century development of the UK car market.As the first-generation model, it helped to cement within the British consciousness the reputation for reliability, robustness, longevity and value of the volume-selling Japanese small car. And having done that, it became a British-made ‘transplant’ car itself, moving into production at Nissan’s Washington plant on Wearside for its popular second generation. This was the bug-eyed Micra supposedly beloved of pensioners, learner drivers and their driving instructors – an image that the car is still associated with to this day.Just as the reimagined Mini came along, the noughties-era, third-generation Micra aimed to prove that the car could be desirable, too. It became something of a technical pioneer and fashionista.But then the Micra’s fortunes changed. It was supplanted on Nissan’s Sunderland production line by the Juke; and the Micras that followed, imported as they were first from Thailand and then from France, struggled to emulate the sales of their forebears. The essence of the car’s identity was, if not lost forever, then certainly misplaced.Time for Micra number six, then. The ‘K15’ becomes the first electric Micra, in anticipation of the Euro 7 emissions regulations that its maker expects to make the business case for combustion-engined superminis unviable.Built in Douai, France, it is the new sibling model of the popular Renault 5. That much takes little more than a momentary glance to realise. So what will the scrutiny of a full Autocar road test reveal about it?

The 1970s craze that transformed VW Beetles into moving adverts

Wed, 8 Apr 2026 13:00:00 +0100

Credit: Beetleboards / Charles E Bird

Beetleboards would pay for a sixth of a Bug's value to advertise on it – and Mini drivers could cash in too

Nobody bats an eye at vans and buses bearing adverts, but the idea of a private car as a mobile billboard seems absurd - yet in the 1970s this was very much a thing.

The idea came to youth-focused marketing man Charles E Bird in 1971. Visiting San Diego University to give a lecture, he spotted among the many Volkswagen Beetles on campus one adorned with flower stickers. 'Bugs' were popular with cash-strapped young Americans, while the student demographic was lucrative but often proved elusive to advertisers, so the potential for a symbiotic situation was obvious.

Bird founded Beetleboards that October and snagged Levi's jeans as its first client. He drove his first stickered Bug to the University of California campus in Los Angeles, and the "cat calls and high signs" received from his target audience confirmed he was onto something.

Enjoy full access to the complete Autocar archive at the magazineshop.com

Within a year, Beetleboards was offering coverage at the 100 most populous US universities, thanks to an "exceptionally talented" team, comprised mostly of young women.

There was one snag, however, which was proving the effectiveness and good condition of these mobile billboards to clients. Beetleboards proposed monthly check-ups at VW dealers only to receive a threat of legal action from the car maker.

Its solution? Park a Levi's Bug outside the Volkswagen of America headquarters, where the enthused reaction of employees prompted the ad director to strike a deal with Bird to carry out the verifications and even contribute to recruitment - including selling stickered cars straight out of showrooms. At a time when a new Beetle cost about $3000, owners could get $480 in just two years from Beetleboards.

International expansion began in 1975, first over to Canada, then Puerto Rico and, in 1978, Britain. Over here the cars were Minis and the scheme was called Roller Posters, run by major outdoor advertising company Mills and Allen. As in the US, clients were mostly makers of consumer goods and cigarettes, but the Mini's manufacturer itself, British Leyland, also capitalised.

Mini owners would receive a free respray, £6 per month (around £30 in modern money) and "other cash bonuses" as compensation for being constantly stared at while driving.

Around the same time, a copycat scheme, named Poster Motors, was initiated by Donnelley Marketforce, likewise targeting Mini owners and offering £6 per month. Advertisers could commit to a campaign lasting either three, six, nine or 12 months.

"While any scheme which gives the motorist a free respray and contributes to his running costs is to be welcomed as a tool to fight inflation, we wonder how much impact the scheme will have as the cars become a more and more familiar sight on the road, assuming the idea takes off," wrote Autocar.

"There is also conceivably a safety hazard in the way the cars are decorated. While the car is obviously eye-catching, and thus easy to spot on the road, the decoration could in some circumstances break up the outline of the car, making it difficult to, for example, judge distances and closing speeds at a quick glance."

Thankfully, it seems no crashes were caused but plenty of brands were boosted: a mass observation survey revealed that stickered cars were much more memorable than print or television advertising, with Levi's Minis achieving a strong 42% rate of spontaneous recall among adolescents and young adults.

Within a year, Poster Motors had 200 stickered-up cars across London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, advertising Levi's jeans, KP nuts and Durex condoms.

Autocar may have tugged its starched collar at that last one, but Poster Motors ensured that its applicants were carefully vetted.

"We don't just take anyone," managing director Brian Lane told the Nottingham Evening Post. "They must have the right attitude and lifestyle to be in keeping with the products. Levi's drivers are generally young people in trendy areas, while Durex drivers are of all ages and social groups, but morally responsible people."

It didn't last long, though. "As the company grew, so did the stress," recalls Bird in his upcoming book Those Amazing Beetleboards. "There were legal matters, financial issues, operational problems and a few too many disappointments." Thus 1984 would be the last year of Beetleboards, and it seems Poster Motors ended about the same time.

The new electric cars coming in 2026

Wed, 8 Apr 2026 08:32:19 +0100

New EVs are arriving thick and fast. Here's your guide to this year's entrants

There seems to be an unrelenting pace behind the uptake of electric cars in the UK: more and more drivers are buying them as a result of improvements in range, efficiency and charging infrastructure.

EVs are also becoming more affordable, with A- and B-segment models offering great value for money, while the government's Electric Car Grant scheme is driving prices down further.

EV sales set another new sales record last year, as more than 470,000 found homes. They now account for more than 23.4% of the new car market, an increase of more than 23% on last year.

Almost every car maker now has an EV in its model line-up. Even Rolls-Royce has ushered in the Spectre, while Alpine has also branched out into the EV space with the A290 and A390.

And while established brands tread a new path in the EV sphere, the market itself has evolved to include new players from China, which are capturing the attention of buyers both in the UK and on the continent with their competitive pricing.

This is set to be another bumper year for EVs and is set to play host to a number of significant car launches, such as the Jaguar Type 00 GT.

Read on to see which new electric cars are set to shake-up the EV landscape in 2026.

Aion UT

Chinese car giant GAC will launch its Aion brand in the UK later this year, importing the Volkswagen ID 3-rivalling UT hatchback and V SUV. UK specifications are unconfirmed, but in China the UT makes 134bhp and can travel up to 267 miles on a charge.

Read more about the Aion UT here

Aion V

The chunky-looking V is set to cost from around £35,000 when it goes on sale this spring. The Kia EV5 and Volkswagen ID 4 rival has a range of up to 317 miles.

Alpine A390

With its clever tri-motor electric drivetrain, impressive interior quality and neatly balanced ride and handling, the striking A390 SUV marks a radical departure for the Alpine brand.

Read our Alpine A390 review

Ariel E-Nomad

Somerset-based Ariel is planning to offer its off-roading Nomad with an electric powertrain and hopes it can achieve a kerb weight of less than 900kg. Other targets include a power output of 281bhp and a 3.5sec 0-62mph time. Electric Baja-style thrills incoming.

Everything we know about the Ariel E-Nomad

Audi A2 E-tron

Audi will revive the A2 name for its new baby crossover, which takes inspiration from the 1999 supermini. The inbound pseudo-MPV will serve as an indirect replacement for the moribund A1 and Q2 and is set to be priced from under £30,000.

Everything we know about the new Audi A2 E-tron

Bentley Luxury Urban SUV

The so-called Luxury Urban SUV is the first electric model to come out of Crewe and will sit below the equally luxurious Bentayga SUV. Technical details are yet to be confirmed but it’s set to be just under 5m long and weigh up to three tonnes.

Everything we know about Bentley's first EV

BMW i3

The i3 saloon is the UK’s longest-range EV, with a whopping WLTP figure of 559 miles. It’s the second model to sport BMW's Neue Klasse design language after the iX3 SUV. With an 800V electrical architecture, the i3 can charge at up to 400kW and is set to go on sale with a price of around £50,000. A Touring estate version is on the way too.

Everything we know about the new BMW i3

BYD Atto 9

BYD is tipped to launch the Atto 9 later this year, with the seven-seat SUV expected to offer plenty of power and ultra-rapid charging.

BYD Seal 06 GT

Volkswagen’s warmed-up ID 3 GTX hatchback will gain a new rival later this year in the form of the BYD Seal 06 GT. Sitting between the Dolphin and Seal, the Chinese hatchback will likely make around 300bhp and offer a range of up to 320 miles.

Everything we know about the Seal 06 GT

Cadillac Lyriq

This famous American luxury brand will return to the UK market this year, and it has its sights trained on the BMW iX.

Read our Cadillac Lyriq review

Cupra Born

The Cupra Born has gained a sharp new look, more physical buttons and a longer range as part of a major update. Entry-level 58kWh cars can now travel up to 280 miles, up from 264 miles previously, while the 79kWh long-range car has been boosted from 346 miles to 372 miles. New materials feature inside, too, and the haptic buttons have been replaced by physical switches.

Everything we know about the new Cupra Born

Cupra Raval

The Raval is Cupra's most ambitious model to date. A cousin of the forthcoming Volkswagen ID Polo, it will be offered with two battery options, 38kWh and 56kWh, with the latter offering a range of around 280 miles. It’s set to go on sale in the UK from around £23,000 – and a range-topping VZ hot hatch version is on its way, too.

Read our Cupra Raval prototype review here

Dacia Spring

The Dacia Spring is the UK’s cheapest car, starting from £12,240. It originally offered a choice of 45bhp and 65bhp electric motors, but the updated version will be available with punchier 70bhp and 101bhp options. The range is still up to 140 miles, though.

Everything we know about the new Dacia Spring

Denza Z9 GT

BYD-owned premium brand Denza will launch its Porsche Taycan-rivalling Z9 GT shooting brake in Europe later this year. It will be available as a plug-in hybrid or as a tri-motor EV that makes 933bhp.

Read our first drive of the Denza Z9 GT

DS No7 E-Tense

DS revealed the No7 earlier this year as a replacement for the 7. It will be offered with a choice of hybrid and electric powertrains and is likely to cost from around £40,000.

Everything we know about the new DS No7

Ferrari Luce

Maranello’s first EV will produce around 1000bhp from four electric motors, offer stunning acceleration and come with the same chassis tech and active technology as the F80 supercar. Called the Luce, the four-door four-seater will come fitted with a colossal 122kWh battery, giving it a range of up to 329 miles and a top speed close to 200mph.

Everything we know about the new Ferrari Luce

Firefly hatchback

Nio will bring its Firefly hatchback to the UK to take on the Mini Cooper – but, unlike in China, it won't support battery-swapping.

Read our Firefly review

Ford Puma Gen-E

The updated Puma Gen-E features a modified battery for greater efficiency, boosting range from 233 miles to more than 250 miles. It also gains Ford’s semi-autonomous BlueCruise feature, which was previously available only on the Mustang Mach-E.

Everything we know about the new Ford Puma Gen-E

Genesis GV60 Magma

This more upmarket alternative to the vaunted Hyundai Ioniq 5 N will adopt similar underpinnings, such as its 89kWh battery and 641bhp dual-motor powertrain. The hot crossover's development chief said it's tailored for “the gentleman driver” but encourages driving in “an exciting, enthusiastic way”.

Everything we know about the Genesis GV60 Magma

Genesis GV90

Set to rival the Volvo EX90 and forthcoming Range Rover Electric, the GV90 is effectively Genesis’s version of the Kia EV9 and Hyundai Ioniq 9, sharing its platform with those electric seven-seaters.

Everything we know about the new Genesis GV90

Honda Super-N

The spiritual successor to the Honda E is aiming for the enthusiast vote, taking inspiration from the 1980s City Turbo and featuring a simulated gearbox and fake exhaust note.

Read our Honda Super-N review

Hyundai Ioniq 3

Previewed by the radical Concept Three, Hyundai;s new electric hatchback will rival the Volkswagen ID 3 and use similar hardware to the Kia EV4, sharing its 400V electrical architecture, batteries and motors. Expect a maximum range of around 390 miles.

Everything we know about the Hyundai Ioniq 3

Hyundai Staria EV

Hyundai’s striking rival to the Ford Torneo will gain an electric powertrain and offer a range of up to 249 miles when it finally comes to the UK.

Everything we know about the Hyundai Staria EV

Jaguar Type 00

Arguably the biggest launch of the year, the Type 00 is the car that will relaunch the storied Jaguar brand as an electric-only luxury brand. Early drives of the 1000bhp four-door GT suggest that it has all the key ingredients to succeed.

Read our first drive of Jaguar's new electric GT

Jeep Recon

This near-600bhp 4x4 is effectively an electric equivalent of the storied Wrangler off-roader – and on the road, it will achieve a range of around 373 miles.

Everything we know about the new Jeep Recon EV

Kia EV2

Kia's smallest electric car to date will arrive in the UK with a sub-£25,000 price and a class-leading range of more than 281 miles.

Read our Kia EV2 review

Kia EV3 GT

The hot version of the talented EV3 crossover has its sights trained on the Cupra Born VZ, using two motors for a total output of 288bhp.

Everything we know about the new Kia EV3 GT

Kia EV4 GT

With a lower and stiffer suspension tune, a simulated gearbox and more power, the GT version of the EV4 hatchback will balance performance and engagement with real-world usability.

Everything we know about the new Kia EV4 GT

Kia EV5 GT

Bolstering Kia’s performance line-up yet further will be the warmed-up EV5 GT. The family SUV will gain a 208bhp front motor for a total output of 302bhp, allowing it to sprint from 0-62mph in 6.2sec.

Everything we know about the new Kia EV5 GT

Leapmotor A05

Stellantis-backed Chinese firm Leapmotor will add the A05 electric supermini to its line-up, which could undercut European rivals on price while also offering more range.

Everything we know about the new Leapmotor A05

Leapmotor B03X

The Ford Puma Gen-E will gain a new competitor in the form of the B03X, a boxy little SUV that should cost from around £25,000 when it arrives later this year.

Everything we know about the new Leapmotor B03X

Leapmotor B05

Leapmotor's new electric hatchback will take on the Cupra Born and Renault Megane, likely using the same battery and powertrain as the B10 and C10 electric SUVs.

Everything we know about the new Leapmotor B05

Lepas L8

Positioned as a premium alternative to the Toyota RAV4, the L8 will be the first model from Chery-owned budget brand Lepas. It's set to launch in the UK in plug-in hybrid form, after which an electric version will follow.

Everything we know about the new Lepas L8

Lexus ES

The eighth-generation ES will be offered in the UK exclusively as an EV. Buyers will have to choose between the single-motor ES 350e, which offers a range of up to 329 miles, and the ES 500e, which gets 338bhp from two motors.

Everything we know about the new Lexus ES

Mazda 6e

The Japanese brand’s sleek saloon has made an electric comeback. It borrows most of its underpinnings from Changan's Deepal SL03 and should go on sale for around £39,000.

Read our Mazda 6e review

Mazda CX-6e

Co-developed by Mazda and Changan, the CX-6e electric SUV promises a range of up to 300 miles and features a huge, 26in infotainment touchscreen.

Everything we know about the new Mazda CX-6e

Mercedes-AMG CLA 45

AMG's patented axial-flux motors were supposed to be confined to the company's more expensive models, but the hot version of the new CLA will get them too. This super-slippery, efficiency-oriented EV will get 500bhp-plus and an active aero package with an air brake.

Everything we know about the new Mercedes-AMG CLA 45

Mercedes-Benz C-Class EQ

Majoring on interior tech, the electric C-Class will arrive with the biggest touchscreen yet fitted to a Mercedes and adopt the same 'LED Iconic Grille' as the new GLC EQ. Expect powertrains ranging from 335bhp for single-motor models and 482bhp for dual-motor ones.

We go for a ride in the new Mercedes-Benz C-Class EV

Mercedes-Benz GLA EQ

The electric version of the forthcoming third-generation GLA will inherit the same 800V electrical underpinnings as the CLA, which means it could be offered with either a 58.5kWh LFP or 85kWh NMC battery options.

Everything we know about the new Mercedes-Benz GLA

Mercedes-Benz GLB EQ

The new seven-seat SUV will be priced from around £41,000. It makes 260bhp in rear-wheel-drive 250+ form or 349bhp in dual-motor 350 4Matic form.

Everything we know about the new Mercedes-Benz GLB

Mercedes-Benz GLC EQ

A direct rival to the BMW iX3, the new GLC will initially be offered in dual-motor 400 4Matic form, making 482bhp for a 4.3sec sprint to 60mph. Range is up to 406 miles and it can charge at up to 330kW.

Read our Mercedes-Benz GLC Electric review

MG Cyberster GTS

MG surprised us all when it announced a 2+2 coupé version of the Cyberster roadster. It's likely to carry the same battery and motors as the convertible but will feel more like an MG B than an MG F.

Everything we know about the new MG Cyberster GTS

MG 4 EV

The updated version of this popular hatchback drops the option of a standard-range battery to make room for the new Urban model while also gaining interior tweaks aimed at improving interior quality.

MG 4 EV Urban

It may use the MG 4 name, but the new Urban variant is a very different car underneath, having front- rather than rear-wheel drive. It costs from just £23,495 and can travel up to 201 miles on a charge. There’s also a Long Range version that nets 278 miles of range yet still costs less than £26,000.

Read our MG 4 EV Urban review

Nissan Ariya

A number of updates will help bring Nissan's larger electric SUV in line with the Leaf – and it’s set to gain vehicle-to-load technology.

Everything we know about the new Nissan Ariya

Nissan Leaf

The new Leaf looks rather different to the original hatchback that launched back in 2010 and ignited Britain's electric future. This new crossover is the only mainstream EV currently built in the UK.

Read our Nissan Leaf review

Peugeot e-208 GTi

Inspired by the legendary 205 GTi hot hatch, the e-208 GTI is set to arrive with a 278bhp powertrain and a limited-slip differential.

Everything we know about the new Peugeot 2-208 GTI

Peugeot e-408

Peugeot’s sleek electric fastback-cum-crossover has been given a light nip-and-tuck, although its range has improved by just two miles to 283 miles.

Everything we know about the new Peugeot e-408

Polestar 5

The Porsche Taycan won’t be sleeping easy with the Polestar 5 on its tail, if its charging statistics are anything to go by. Polestar says the saloon's new tech means it can gain 100 miles' worth of charge in just five minutes while avoiding battery degradation.

Read our Polestar 5 prototype review

Porsche Cayenne Electric

The new Cayenne Electric will be sold alongside the old petrol Cayenne as the German marque mulls its future EV plans. Powered by a 113kWh battery, the EV promises a range of up to 398 miles, while 400kW charging affords a 10-80% boost in just 16 minutes.

Read our Porsche Cayenne Electric review

Range Rover Electric

The Range Rover Electric is one of the year's most anticipated EVs, promising superb off-road ability and class-leading comfort. Its 118kWh battery yields around 300 miles of range, while power stands at 542bhp and torque at 627lb ft.

Read our Range Rover Electric prototype review

Range Rover Velar

Due later this year, the second-generation Velar appears to be more of a high-riding saloon than an SUV. It’s expected to be the first model to use JLR’s new EMA EV platform and will rival the Porsche Macan Electric.

Everything we know about the new Range Rover Velar

Renault 4 Savane

With grippier tyres, a 15mm increase in ride height and an extra motor for a four-wheel drive set-up, the Savane is a more rugged, go-anywhere version of the 4.

Everything we know about the new Renault 4 Savane

Renault Megane

Renault’s oldest EV on sale is due a major overhaul this year – and the French firm could even add a RS-badged range-topper to its line-up.

Everything we know about the new Renault Megane

Renault Twingo

Cute, affordable and fun, the Twingo is a city car that sits below the 5 in the Renault line-up. Power comes from a 27.5kWh battery that can be charged at up to 50kW and yields a range of 163 miles.

Read our Renault Twingo review

Skoda Peaq

The Czech brand’s vast new electric seven-seater will be its biggest, plushest most expensive car to date when it launches later this year. A handful of powertrains will be available, with prices starting from £50,000.

Read our Skoda Peaq prototype review

Skoda Epiq

Skoda's smallest EV to date is expected to cost less than £25,000 at launch. The full statistics haven't yet been revealed, but the range-topping Epiq 55 has a range of up to 267 miles. We were impressed by the compact crossover's comfortable ride and clever packaging when we drove it in prototype form; there’s real promise here.

Read our Skoda Epiq prototype review

Smart #2

The spirit of the original Smart car will be revived in a new electric two-seater – although confusingly it will be smaller than the #1 electric crossover.

Everything we know about the new Smart #2

Subaru E-Outback

This rugged, off-road-ready electric estate uses a 375bhp dual-motor powertrain and comes with a suite of dedicated go-anywhere driving modes.

Read our Subaru e-Outback review

Subaru Uncharted

Based on the new Toyota C-HR+, the Uncharted SUV is the first front-wheel-drive Subaru. Top-spec versions get a 338bhp four-wheel-drive powertrain, though, offering a range of around 326 miles.

Read our Subaru Uncharted review

Toyota bZ4X Touring

Toyota’s partnership with Subaru has given it the opportunity to launch its own high-riding, outdoorsy estate called the bZ4X Touring. Like the E-Outback, it uses a 376bhp four-wheel-drive electric powertrain.

Everything we know about the new Toyota bZ4X Touring

Toyota Hilux BEV

Toyota's enduring pick-up truck will be available in electric form in its ninth generation. The Hilux BEV promises a range of up to 150 miles. It will be sold alongside a diesel Hilux in Europe.

Read our Toyota Hilux Electric review

Volkswagen ID Cross

Riding on the same platform as the ID Polo, Cupra Raval and Skoda Epiq, the new ID Cross is proportionally similar to the T-Cross and is expected to go on sale with a price of around £25,000. The range-topping version should offer a range of more than 260 miles. Volkswagen has also ditched its annoying haptic controls in favour of proper buttons and switches.

Read our Volkswagen ID Cross prototype review

Volkswagen ID Polo

The ID Polo will be the German brand’s vital new offering in the sub £22,000 EV category when it goes on sale later this year. It's powered by either a 37kWh lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery or a 52kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) one for a maximum range of up to 280 miles.

Read our Volkswagen ID Polo prototype review

Volkswagen ID Polo GTI

The first electric Volkswagen to wear the storied GTI badge will produce 223bhp and cost from around £30,000.

Everything we know about the new Volkswagen ID Polo GTI

Volkswagen ID 3 Neo

Wolfsburg’s Golf-sized electric hatchback will gain a new lease of life with a new name, a new design, higher-quality materials inside and powertrain upgrades.

Everything we know about the new Volkswagen ID 3 Neo

Volvo EX60

This electric equivalent of the EX60 is the first car to use Volvo's new SPA3 platform for EVs. With the largest 112kWh battery installed, it can travel up to 503 miles on a charge.

We go for a passenger ride in the new Volvo EX60

Xpeng G9

This SUV will be Chinese brand Xpeng's second UK offering. It has a rather innovative party trick up its sleeve: ultra-rapid charging means it can gain up to 250 miles of range in just over 10 minutes.

Everything we know about the new Xpeng G9

Xpeng X9

The X9 looks like an MPV to us, but Xpeng claims its it's a starship. Either way, this new Volkswagen ID Buzz rival makes 496bhp and can travel up to 436 miles.

Everything we know about the new Xpeng X9

Zeekr 7X

Geely-owned Zeekr will announce itself in the UK later this year with the 7X, targeting electric SUVs from brands such as Tesla, Audi and Volvo.

Read our Zeekr ZX review

Zeekr 7GT

With 637bhp, a 3.3sec 0-60mph time and a target price of £40,000, the 413-mile 7GT is a super-fast electric estate that will go up against the Volkswagen ID 7 GTX Tourer.

Everything we know about the Zeekr 7GT

Mercedes-Benz CLA Electric

Wed, 8 Apr 2026 07:00:00 +0100

Mercedes' mid-sized EV’s big-range and fast-charging claims are put to the test The very latest new electric cars have a surefire way of making nearly new ones age so much quicker than their petrol-powered antecedents ever used to. The electric Mercedes-Benz CLA certainly felt like the future, about five minutes ago. It was announced in spring 2025. It remains the reigning European Car of the Year. It has the kind of performance, range and efficiency that was considered good enough, back then, to be class-leading.And now? The BMW i3’s the new flavour of the month, taking claimed range beyond 550 miles WLTP. Mercedes, meanwhile, has to look to some added variety to keep the custom rolling in. Which is why we’re now testing not only a CLA Shooting Brake body derivative, but also getting our first go in a twin-motor, -350 4Matic version.The arrivals of these derivatives is part of the usual fleshing out of the model range. There’ll be a 58kWh CLA 200 joining the party this summer as well, for which is claimed a WLTP range of as much as 321 miles in Shooting Brake form, and can be bought from a whisker over £40,000.Here's Mercedes-Benz, then, with one of the longest-range electric cars on sale in the UK – and it’s not the brand’s top-dollar technology flagship but the entry-level saloon. The Mercedes-Benz CLA achieves this not with some next-generation battery, but with a combination of the fairly traditional engineering that Mercedes has long been known for – gearboxes and aerodynamics – and the electric motor expertise it has gathered over the past few years of volume EV making.It proved a match for the Tesla Model 3 in a recent group test, even if it couldn’t quite beat it. Now to see how it fares in our range of instrumented tests.

5-pot demise, Lego Renault, cars from vans

Wed, 8 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Prior and Cropley discuss Lego Renault, real vs digital instruments and more

In this week's Autocar podcast Steve Cropley and Matt Prior discuss Audi's plan to end five-cylinder engine production,

Plus, a Lego version of the Renault 5 Turbo 3E, real vs digital instruments and your correspondence.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts or via your preferred podcast platform. There's a special magazine offer too, just for podcasts listeners if you click here.

EU poised to deal blow to UK's EV industry before it even gets going

Wed, 8 Apr 2026 05:00:00 +0100

The new Nissan Leaf is among the UK's few electric exports at present

Industrial Accelerator Act to lock British-built EVs out of European markets, with "catastrophic" consequence

The UK’s beleaguered car industry is facing a new threat from changing EU rules that have been dubbed “pretty catastrophic” and “gravely concerning” if they go through as proposed.

The Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) is the EU’s response to threats to key industries including automotive and battery making, mainly from China.

In an impact assessment report, the European Commission noted the phenomenal rise in Chinese car imports into the bloc, up 380% in the first half of 2025, while those from the EU to China fell 50%. “This phenomenon represents huge competition for local manufacturers,” it said.

The problem for the UK is that post-Brexit we are also being treated as a "third country", along with China, so will be locked out of key benefits for EVs made within the EU’s boundaries.

“In a worst-case scenario, the IAA could be pretty catastrophic. It could lead to a dramatic contraction of the UK auto industry,” said David Bailey, professor of business economics at Birmingham Business School.

What the EU has done is to create a series of benefits only available to electric cars made within the bloc. Those that are made in the EU will be included in state procurement lists (ie government fleets); eligible for new EV targets imposed on big corporate fleets; available for state purchase incentives; and eligible for the CO2 incentive that gives car makers extra credit for selling small EVs (those less than 4.2m long).

To be locked out of any one of those benefits would do significant damage to the UK’s nascent EV manufacturing, but the fleet exclusion would hurt the most, given that we mostly build larger models.

“Corporate fleets account for 50–60% of all new car sales,” Bailey said. “If the IAA passes in its current form, a company director in Lyon or Frankfurt might find that a UK-built car is significantly more expensive to lease than a French- or German-made rival, simply because the British car doesn't carry the ‘Made in Europe’ badge.”

There’s a big ‘if’ here, because there’s some confusion over whether the UK is totally excluded or just locked out of the corporate fleets or small car credits. The proposal suggests the latter, with those countries with which the EU has a trade deal counting as of "Union origin”.

Nissan has interpreted this as a partial victory for the UK. “We’re pleased the Commission has addressed industry concerns and recognised how important partners are to the EU supply chain,” it said in a statement, while also criticising exclusion from the other two benefits because it creates “unnecessary complexity for the industry”.

However, an annexe to the proposal seems to contradict the main text, suggesting that EU assembly will be required to unlock all four benefits.

It also gets tough on battery sourcing, requiring least three battery components, including the cells, to be produced in the EU, rising to five in 2030.

Insider information from Brussels relayed to Autocar suggests this exposes underlying tension within the Commission, the annexes being a last-minute insertion by the team for Stéphane Séjourné, the hardline industry strategy commissioner, undermining the more dovish trade department.

The head of the UK's Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), Mike Hawes, described the IAA proposal as “gravely concerning” but also “poorly drafted” and called for immediate talks. “The UK government and European counterparts must work together urgently to resolve the situation,” he said.

Response to the proposal from the industry at large has been mixed. Renault CEO François Provost described the focus on local car makers as “common sense” while reserving further comment due to the complexity. Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume described the small car credit benefit as “very helpful”, with the company's Spanish-built small EVs (the Cupra Raval, Skoda Epiq, Volkswagen ID Cross and Volkswagen ID Polo) due to come on stream later this year.

Europe’s supplier association, CLEPA, was strongly supportive, calling implementation of the act “more crucial than ever” as the industry faces a financial crunch and continuing job losses.

BMW, on the other hand, isn't a fan. Like rival Mercedes-Benz, it's a global exporter and as such fears reciprocal action from China. “We do not believe in protectionism but rather in the power of innovation to compete on the global stage,” outgoing BMW CEO Oliver Zipse said.

Toyota has also criticised it. “Toyota strongly believes that for the EU to achieve its objectives, it should take an inclusive approach to leverage key partners within the EU and trusted partners with existing agreements outside the EU,” Matt Harrison, chief corporate officer for Toyota Motor Europe, said in a statement. The “trusted partners” he cited included Japan, South Korea, the UK and Turkey.

What happens now is a lot of wrangling in Brussels as the various parties thrash out an agreement that everyone is happy with – or least unhappy with. The UK won’t be the only country angling for inclusion in the “union-made” criteria, with Turkey, Morocco and Serbia fighting to protect car industries that also rely on the EU as their main market.

Last year, 57% of the UK’s car production was exported to the EU. Almost none was electric, but that will change as Nissan ramps up production of the new Leaf. Both Toyota and Mini will also need to decide whether to switch their plants over to EV making.

One line of attack being taken by the SMMT is to argue that the proposal is incompatible with the post-Brexit EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, although Bailey fears this was too narrowly focused on tariffs to be much use against a non-tariff barrier like the IAA.

The beneficiary will be the EU, potentially attracting fresh investment from car makers not willing to be shut out by the bloc in its newly protective mode.

“While aimed at slowing Chinese OEM penetration, the measures are likely to accelerate localisation decisions already under way, potentially driving higher investment into Europe,” Philippe Houchois, automotive analyst at the bank Jefferies, wrote in a note to investors.

Once again, however, the limbo means the UK is off limits for investment until the final version of the IAA is published and it's known whether this huge barrier is lifted or not.

“You've got another big dollop of uncertainty, which is likely to impact investment in the UK,” Bailey said. “It’s going to affect the next decision on where a car maker is going to produce their cars, for example Mini in Oxford. It means the UK becomes a less attractive place to make cars.”

Exclusive: McLaren to reveal its future this summer

Wed, 8 Apr 2026 00:00:01 +0100

New, post-merger line-up will include multiple ICE models due by 2030, starting with concept

McLaren will this summer finally preview its first new car since its bombshell merger with start-up Forseven - and the Woking firm plans to launch multiple models, all featuring combustion powertrains, by 2030.

As first revealed by Autocar, the previously struggling British sports car firm was bought a year ago by CYVN Holdings, an Abu Dhabi state investment fund.

It essentially merged McLaren with Forseven, which had been working in secret on developing a new line of vehicles, with the start-up's CEO, Nick Collins, heading the combined operation.

CYVN has invested around £1.5 billion in McLaren, which will allow the firm to grow its range beyond two-seat mid-engined supercars.

Collins initially promised McLaren would outline its future product strategy in public before the end of 2025. But speaking exclusively to Autocar on the first anniversary of the deal, he said that was delayed for strategic reasons.

Collins vowed that from this summer, McLaren will "start to unpack" the new plan in public.

To read Collins' full interview with Autocar, subscribe to the magazine digitally or through Apple News+

He also said full-sized models of every new car the firm will launch before 2030 have already been shown to dealers suggesting multiple cars are in the product plans.

Any announcement is likely to be closely tied to the start of deliveries of the new W1 hypercar, the successor to the acclaimed P1.

Collins said: "From this summer, we start to go external [with our plans], whether it's because we're starting to deliver W1s or because we're showing you product."

While Collins wouldn't comment on what exactly the company will reveal this year, Autocar sources suggest that it won't show a production model, but it will give a clear preview of its new-look cars.

Notably, Collins told Autocar that McLaren will launch an electric car only "when our customers want one", adding that "the market doesn't want one yet". This means the models in the product plan for 2030 are all planned to feature combustion powertrains, although Collins said the firm has the "flexibility" to adapt should market conditions change.

New Lexus ES due in June from £59,345 – and EV only in UK

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 15:19:00 +0100

Audi A6 and BMW 5 Series-rivalling saloon will go on sale in May – but without Europe's hybrid powertrain

The Lexus ES will return for its eighth generation in June as a rival to the Audi A6 and BMW 5 Series, starting from £59,345 – and be sold exclusively with electric power in the UK.

In Western Europe, the ES will be offered with a 199bhp hybrid powertrain as well as two electric options. However, given the greater proportion of EV sales in the UK compared with those in Europe, combustion-engined powertrains won't be offered here.

Instead, the UK-spec ES will be sold from launch in only one form: the front-driven 350e. This packs a single 221bhp motor and a 77kWh lithium ion battery, yielding a range of around 329 miles between charges (although an official WLTP figure is yet to be confirmed) and a 0-62mph sprint time of 8.2sec.

On sale from 1 May, it will be offered in three trims: Premium at £59,345, Premium Plus at £68,245 and Takumi at a lofty £72,545. The latter offers luxuries such as heated, vented and reclining rear seats.

The dual-motor, four-wheel-drive ES 500e, which will be offered in Europe from launch, is mooted to join the UK line-up at a later stage. This offers 338bhp and a 0-62mph time of 5.7sec, but its range (which has yet to be revealed) will be shorter than that of the 350e.

Lexus said the new ES makes advances in "ride quality, comfort and quietness" over its predecessor and has been designed to offer "first-class comfort for everyone on board".

The minimalist cockpit marks a complete departure from that of the previous car and has been designed with a heavy influence from the Chinese market: physical controls are few and a large, 12.3in touchscreen takes centre stage as the primary control interface. Hidden beneath the screen is a row of haptic switches that illuminate when the car is powered on.

The new ES is based on the same GA-K platform as the NX SUV. Lexus said the structure's rigidity has been increased throughout the chassis to boost refinement and responsiveness and resulting in an "agile, responsive feel that belies its size" - which is also increased over the previous ES, by 165mm in length, to take the car to 5.14m overall.

How new AI tech can predict potholes before you hit them

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 15:00:00 +0100

ZF's latest tech could change the way we drive, and the way we're driven

In this digital age, car engineers are continuing to find innovative ways to improve the thing that underpins all road vehicles, the chassis.

To that end, ZF has been showing off its Chassis 2.0 strategy, which combines smart hardware, artificial intelligence and software to improve functionality, and at CES last month it introduced two new features. One was Active Noise Reduction and the other AI Road Sense.

AI Road Sense is designed to assess the road surface ahead of the car and make rapid adjustments to the suspension settings, subtly configuring the chassis set-up to better cope with its immediate future.

There has been a fair bit of industry research into using on-board systems to 'read' the road surface and detect either changing conditions due to rain, snow or ice or the quality of the road surface itself.

Honda Research Institute USA, for example, ran a pilot scheme for a road condition monitoring system. The idea was to use GPS location details and data from sensors such as cameras to gather road condition information and share it anonymously with road authorities looking after road maintenance.

Nexteer Automotive, working with Tactile Mobility, won a CES Innovation Award in 2023 for its Road Detection Software, which collects real-time road friction data via virtual sensors and, using AI, assigns it to various road condition categories such as 'dry', 'ice' or 'wet'.

That data is then sent to the cloud, where it can be shared with following vehicles, alerting them to the conditions ahead.

In 2016 JLR presented its research into a surface identification system as part of its wider All Terrain Autonomy Technology programme.

Using a combination of radar and ultrasonic sensors to scan the path immediately ahead, the system could advise the driver about the viability of continuing without getting stuck.

The ZF system differs from all of these in that it continuously reconfigures the chassis to "improve safety and comfort" by predicting road and surface conditions and instantly adapting the car's behaviour.

The clever thinking is done by ZF's Cubix chassis software, which also controls Active Noise Reduction. Data is collected by the car's existing sensors and from that the system adjusts damping torque distribution to the wheels and chassis settings to suit the surface conditions.

The software also has a function called Driver Behaviour Recognition, which analyses the driver's use of the controls to predict driving style and set apt comfort preferences.

ZF's car maker customers can choose from three configurations, which can be adapted to suit different sizes of vehicle.

The Standard version relies on existing data running through the car's on-board data network; Advanced adds camera-based surface detection; and Premium also includes lidar scanning, which can generate a 3D profile up to 25 metres ahead.

New BMW i7 to be unveiled on 22 April

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 14:36:00 +0100

Fresh look and revised batteries inbound for new i7 as BMW rolls out its Neue Klasse range

The updated BMW i7 will be unveiled at the Beijing motor show on 22 April with a fresh look and key improvements to its electrical powertrain.

The i7’s refreshed design is expected to bring it closer to the brand’s new ‘Neue Klasse’ models, the iX3 and i3, although it will be more conservative than those models in its transformation.

The most significant change will be a simpler front-end design, with a squarer and more prominent grille, plus wider daytime-running lights.

Its battery, meanwhile, will receive the cylindrical cells introduced with the Neue Klasse models but integrated into the same housing as the existing i7.

The new cells will bring a 20% improvement in energy density, which should bring a corresponding increase in range. For reference, the outgoing i7 can drive up to 387 miles per charge in its rangiest form.

BMW has worked with Croatian firm Rimac Technology on the new i7’s high-voltage battery system. Mate Rimac, founder and president of the Rimac Group, said the revised electricals will bring “significant improvements in energy, range and charging performance”.

The i7 is one of several BMW models due to be updated this year as the firm rolls out the Neue Klasse, the catch-all term it is using to describe a new approach to design, engineering and electrification.

It has already launched the iX3 SUV and the i3. They will be followed by the updated i7 and 7 Series, a heavily revised version of the combustion-engined 3 Series, and a new electric iX5.

The 5 Series and i5 are also due to be overhauled.

Jaecoo 7: Why is the 'entirely flavourless' SUV a smash hit?

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 12:34:34 +0100

Chinese SUV's sales performance is impressive for a new brand, outdoing perennial chart-toppers

The news that the Jaecoo 7 was the UK’s best-selling car in March wasn’t really a surprise (it has been in the top 10 for much of the last year), but it’s still a significant milestone that deserves some exploration.

That the Chinese SUV’s rise to the top of the UK sales chart already felt inevitable is notable in itself: it’s a genuine cultural phenomenon, an expectation-bending sales smash from a brand that has scarcely been in the UK for a year. It will sit alongside machines such as the Nissan Qashqai and Kia Sportage in transitioning from big selling cars into basically household names.

That’s despite the fact that, objectively, the 7 isn’t a brilliant car: we gave it 2.5 stars when we gave it a full road test, noting that while “a complete and competent car” for those on a budget, it was also “irksome, distracting and poorly calibrated” and “entirely flavourless” to drive. We couldn’t really find much to separate it from a raft of other identikit Chinese SUVs that have been launched into the UK in the last year from brands such as BYD, Omoda, Changan, Leapmotor and more.

Those reservations clearly haven’t put off many buyers, and clearly there is some appeal to a car that offers the kit of premium rivals for significantly less money. There are some compelling deals to be found and a ready supply of stock.

Which brings us to the 7’s killer sell: it has become known as the ‘Temu Range Rover’. Because, yes, if you squint a bit it looks like a premium £70k SUV but is half the price. And, as a quick search on social media will tell you, that has won over plenty of buyers. And while it might not be Jaecoo’s official marketing slogan, it’s a brilliant one: like when Volkswagen first bought Skoda, for many there’s something compelling cool about thinking you’ve snagged an absolute bargain because you’re not brand-conscious.

If anything, the concern for Jaecoo (and its sister brand Omoda) is that this one car has done so well that it has perhaps become a brand in its own right. Jaecoo has the smaller 5 and larger 8 coming soon, but are 7 owners now invested enough in the brand to branch out?

It’s also important to note that the 7 isn’t the only Chinese car that UK buyers are warming to. In the first quarter of 2026, MG has a market share of 3.88%, with BYD not far behind. The Chinese brands are no longer coming: they’re here.

And that success, headlined by the 7, should serve as a warning to European manufacturers. Faced with this glut of Chinese imports, many of those firms are doubling down on the strength of their brands, believing that European consumers will value the companies, badges and models they know and love. But the sales data suggests consumers perhaps aren’t as loyal as they’re banking on – especially if they think they can bag a bargain.

Of course, the 7’s story is still in a very early phase: it’s only been in the UK for a year or so, after all. Jaecoo needs to prove it can sustain its success when the ‘Temu Range Rover’ hype fades and even more similarly priced and sized rivals enter the market.

Crucially, in a few years when it’s time for early 7 buyers to renew their PCP deals or trade in their motor, will they have grown weary of the dynamic and usability shortcomings our testers identified? Or is it such a bargain that they still won’t care?

Why the crossplane V8 is the ultimate soul-soothing engine

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Is there a biological reason why we find the low-frequency rumble of a V8 so addictive?

There is more than one type of V8 engine in the world, of course, but when people say they like V8s, I think we know what they're mostly talking about.

They don't usually mean high-revving, flatplane-cranked V8s like those you will find in many supercars or racing cars - the ones that sound like two four-cylinder engines welded together, which is not surprising, because that's essentially how their cylinders fire.

No, they usually mean old-school, fat (in both the 'f' and 'ph' versions of the word) crossplane-cranked V8s, often of Detroit descent, with a low rumble, a broad and responsive powerband and often a shouty upper range.

These are the noises of Nascar, Mad Max and the drag strip, and yet also a luxury sports car or off-roader or speedboat. This kind of V8 engine is as versatile as the breadth of its torque band. And if you like them, I think you probably really like them.

Seemingly a lot of people do. Start typing 'why do V8 engines' into a search engine and 'sound so good?' is one of the top suggested sentence completions.

Exactly why they sound so good is hard to say, because the precise sound that one makes depends on a lot of factors, from firing order to engine size, vee angle, bore and stroke plus everything ancillary besides.

Whatever, though, there is a particular character to them. I did read that at low revs the offbeat rumble, which comes because two cylinders on the same bank will often fire one after the other before the firing order swaps banks again, is redolent of a heartbeat, so a softly pulsing vee can be soul-soothing, like being back in the womb.

Call it redneck floatation therapy. But there might be nothing in that. If it wasn't in the womb, I can't tell you when I first heard the sounds of a V8 engine, because, as with you, it will have been present throughout my entire life.

The first known V8 was made in 1904, designed by Léon Levavasseur for French engine maker Antoinette.

So in the same way that I don't remember first hearing Beethoven's Symphony No 7, the V8 has always been there. The two are among my favourite sounds, and it would have been extraordinary to be fully conscious when I first heard either so I could remember the shock of it.

Such was the success of Beethoven's seventh that when the composer finished conducting the piece at its premiere, the audience demanded part of it was played again immediately as an encore.

I can imagine that when the Antoinette was first shut down there might have been bravos from onlookers too. 'Hey Léon, fire that up again, won't you?'

Used Mazda 2 2023-2024 review

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 10:12:53 +0100

Mazda supermini continues with appealing old-fashioned qualities David Cameron in Number 10 and Cheryl Cole atop the charts; Russia waging war on Ukraine and a review of the Mk3 Mazda 2 featuring on the front page of Autocar. In some ways, summer 2014 feels like ancient history; in others, it’s like nothing has changed at all.The third-generation Mazda 2 came out more than a decade ago now, and yet it's only just left us. In that time, other superminis have bloated in size, gained smaller turbocharged engines and been stuffed with ever more technology. Meanwhile, the little Mazda has remained resolutely old-school.Add to that the shaky future of some of its rivals, and rather than becoming dated, it could be argued that the Mazda 2 is now a more uniquely enticing product than ever.For 2023, the Mazda 2 was facelifted a second time, with new bumper and wheel designs, new colour options, and an unusual blanked-off grille on some versions. In the past few years, it's also gained an updated multimedia system to keep it fresh, and mild-hybrid powertrains to ensure it's not taxed out of existence.Range at a glanceThere's not been a diesel Mazda 2 for a while now, but there's still a good amount of choice, with four variants of Mazda's own Skyactiv-G engine, a 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol. It comes in 74bhp, 89bhp and 113bhp forms. Only the 89bhp version can be had with an automatic gearbox, and manual versions of the 89bhp and 113bhp versions get mild-hybrid assistance, called E-Skyactiv in Mazda speak.There are four trim levels to choose from (named Centre-Line, Exclusive-Line, Homura and Homura Aka), all of which provide a comprehensive specification list. You can expect at the minimum air conditioning, a USB port, hill-start assistance, cruise control, alloy wheels, rear parking sensors and an 8.0in touchscreen infotainment system complete with sat-nav, a DAB radio, Bluetooth and smartphone mirroring.VersionPowerSkyactiv-G 75PS74bhpE-Skyactiv-G 1.5 90PS89bhpSkyactiv-G 1.5 90PS Automatic89bhpE-Skyactiv-G 1.5 115PS114bhp

Jaecoo 7 becomes UK's best-selling car in March

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 09:44:06 +0100

Chinese newcomer deposes Ford Puma, Nissan Qashqai and Kia Sportage to take the top spot

The Jaecoo 7 was the UK’s best-selling new car in March, beating regular chart-toppers the Ford Puma, Nissan Qashqai and Kia Sportage.

A total of 10,064 examples of the Chinese crossover were registered last month, compared with 9193 Pumas, 8718 Qashqais and 7310 Sportages.

Such a performance in what is typically the strongest month of the year for sales – as buyers look to get a car with a new numberplate format – has propelled the 7 into second place for the year so far, with 15,569 registrations. That puts it just behind the Puma, with 16,128.

The 7 is notable for its meteoric rise, as the debut model from a brand that is new to the UK. Jaecoo, owned by Chinese giant Chery, began selling cars here only in January 2025 yet has already outperformed long-established manufacturers so far this year. Those include Citroën, Mazda and Mini, among others.

March was also a record month for registrations of electric cars, at 86,120 examples. This however means their sales still trail the 33% target set by the government’s zero-emission vehicle mandate for 2026, with a market share of 22.4%.

SMMT chief Mike Hawes warned that the ongoing war in Iran could cause disruption: “Much of March’s performance will be from orders placed before the start of the Iran conflict, which threatens to raise the cost of living, undermining consumer confidence.”

This situation could work in favour of EVs, though. With fuel prices surging due to the conflict, dealers trading in used EVs have told Autocar of a dramatic rise in interest. This could also bring greater sales of new EVs if the war continues for an extended period.

Alongside EVs, registrations of hybrids and plug-in hybrids also rose dramatically, with the latter up 46.9% year on year to 49,671.

Meanwhile, sales of pure-petrol and pure-diesel cars dropped by 6.1% and 11.4% respectively.

Driven: Toyota RAV4 GR Sport – transformed, but not how you think

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0100

It has no extra power and a dull interior, but the supposedly sporty version is the pick of the RAV4 range

It's a curious sort of conundrum, this GR Sport. Ostensibly the sporty flagship of the new RAV4 range, a Toyota equivalent to BMW's M Sport, it's actually something of a paradox.

It boasts no more power than the standard four-wheel-drive model and is just as economical, yet in many key ways it's a superior, more well-rounded car.

Visually, it adheres rigidly to the sporty flagship protocol: imposing 20in black alloy wheels and a wider, more aggressive stance. But the real magic lies beneath the surface.

While a standard hybrid is available in lesser markets, British buyers get only the plug-in hybrid, available with front- or four-wheel drive.

Regardless of whether you tick the GR Sport box, the 4WD models share the exact same powertrain. It consists of a naturally aspirated 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, three electric motors (one on the front axle, one in the CVT and one at the rear) and a 20kWh battery offering an official electric-only range of 75 miles.

The 0-62mph sprint is dispatched in just under six seconds, although from the driver's seat it feels noticeably faster. It's genuinely brisk from a standstill and in-gear acceleration is sharp.

Despite the presence of a CVT, historically a cold-water pouring device on fun, the sheer abundance of electric torque makes progress feel effortless.

When the petrol engine is coaxed into life, the transition is managed with minimal fuss. Toyota has invested heavily in sound deadening and chassis strengthening, and it pays dividends; bury the throttle and you will still experience a ping of that characteristic CVT rubber-bandness, but it's never egregiously loud.

What the GR Sport lacks in extra power, it makes up for with bespoke chassis tuning. Upgrades include high-performance front dampers, a reinforced rear suspension brace and a dedicated spring rate. There’s no fancy adaptive air suspension, but it doesn’t need it.

The ride is, in a word, superb. Compared with the standard RAV4, which suffers from overly soft damping and a slightly bouncy demeanour, the GR Sport is a revelation. It's tightened just enough to deliver taut body control without sacrificing overall comfort.

The steering, too, is pleasingly direct, offering a respectable amount of feedback. Selecting Sport mode adds a little artificial weight, although it alters nothing fundamentally.

Push hard into a tight corner, hoping to provoke the rear motor into some tail-led antics, and the traction control quickly and firmly calls time.

Inside, however, the GR magic wanes. Despite a smattering of nine GR badges and the obligatory red stitching, there's little to suggest this car's dynamic superiority.

Behind the wheel sit two paddles - not for shifting gears but for adjusting the regenerative braking. There are six settings, none of which offer a particularly forceful deceleration, and maddeningly the car forgets your chosen level the moment you look away. It's a definite swing and a miss. I suspect the Gazoo Racing engineers who obsessively pored over the spring rates were locked out of the interior design meetings.

Is this truly a sporty flagship? A range-topper brimming with Toyota rally charm? Only up to a point. It is undoubtedly spacious, comfortable and remarkably economical, but genuine performance SUV enthusiasts may feel short-changed.

North American buyers receive a more aggressive front splitter and a suitably ridiculous rear wing that actually looks the part. Here those seeking a true thriller will find the power lacking compared with the cooking models, while buyers who find the GR badge a bit gauche and opt for an Excel will miss out on the transformative suspension upgrades.

Volkswagen considering EV comeback for Touareg SUV

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Sales boss sees a niche for upmarket cars without an overtly premium badge

Volkswagen is looking at plugging the gap left by the retiring Touareg with an electric equivalent so the brand can continue to offer a flagship to higher-end customers, sales boss Martin Sander has confirmed.

The current combustion-engined SUV will bow out in just a few months after 24 years on sale as the firm focuses on higher-volume and lower-cost models.

However, Sander said there remains a gap in the market for upmarket cars that don't carry a premium badge – which the Touareg and Phaeton saloon (discontinued in 2016) were designed to serve.

Sander said: "We are the brand for the people, and that's what our name stands for." He added that the firm's "top priority" would remain "creating great vehicles" that are affordable to a wide range of consumers.

However, he also said: "Touareg is not huge business, but it's got its place and this is why we are looking into opportunities for a next generation.

"This market is somewhere between the volume and premium market and is for customers who want a vehicle with great design and space, and a very high level of quality and sophistication but, for whatever reason, do not want to be associated with a premium brand.

"This is the Touareg target group and we're looking into possibilities to serve these customers with a future product."

Sander said Touareg buyers "are very down-to-earth people who are affluent", adding: "They run businesses but are low-key. They don't want to show off. It's not appropriate to pull up in front of their customers or at the construction site with something like a Porsche Macan."

He confirmed the new model would remain a large SUV "because 80% of that market is SUVs" and would also be a full-electric offering.

Any 'ID Touareg' would probably arrive after the likes of the Volkswagen ID Golf on the incoming advanced SSP platform and could, as with today's Touareg, use technology from premium siblings Audi and Porsche.